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EVERTCHILD'S SERIES 



WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL 
DAYS 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON ■ CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



EVERYCHILD'S SERIES 

WORK AND PLAY 
IN COLONIAL DAYS 



BY 

MARY HOLBROOK MacELROY 

L 
FORMERLY TEACHER OF METHOD IN UNITED STATES 

HISTORY, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 

OSWEGO, N. Y. 



Nefo gork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1917 

All rights reserved 



E/6 

■ A 



Copyright, 1917, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electrotyped. Published August, 1917. 



AUG 16 1317 
©CI.A473127 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 



PAGE 

The Emigrants ...... i 



CHAPTER II 
The Voyage and the First Winter . . 10 



CHAPTER III 



( Little Pioneers 17 

I 

CHAPTER IV 

I 

Children's Games 25 

1 

CHAPTER V 

Puritan Playthings 34 

i 

CHAPTER VI 
Sunday Clothes 47 

CHAPTER VII 
Their Schooling 57 



vi conten rs 

CHAPTER VIII 

PAGE 

Wow Girls were Educated .... 65 

CHAPTER IX 
Colonial Textbooks ..... 73 

CHAPTER X 
Children's Handwork . . . . .8; 



CHAPTER XI 
Spoiled Children 



CHAPTER XVI 

What Colonial Children Read 



94 



CHAPTER XII 
Puritan Discipline 101 

CHAPTER XIII 
Very Naughty Girls 113 

CHAPTER XIV 
About Their Manners 126 

CHAPTER XV 

Children's Tasks 137 



49 



WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL 
DAYS 



WORK AND PLAY IN 
COLONIAL DAYS 

CHAPTER I 
The Emigrants 

A little over three hundred years ago a 
ship whose name has become very famous 
anchored on our New England coast. It was 
an emigrant ship, the Mayflower, from Plym- 
outh, England. You have seen, perhaps, 
the great ocean liners with their thousand 
or more emigrant passengers. Very different 
in looks was this small sailing vessel with its 
hundred English-speaking passengers. There 
were no steamships in those days, and cross- 
ing the Atlantic was long and dangerous. 
This small sailing vessel had been three 
months crossing the stormy Atlantic. 

They had come so far and to such a wild, 
unknown country for reasons very different 



2 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

from those which the modern emigrant has 
for coming to America. The latter comes to 
better his condition, to get work that is 




The Mayflower 

better paid than in his own country, some- 
times to get rid of military service. The 
Pilgrims came that they might live in their 
own way, have their own government and 
their own church. 

Twelve years before, they had left England 



THE EMIGRANTS 3 

for Holland, a country where their religious 
beliefs were tolerated and where their children 
could receive a good education. The story 
of their last years in England is a very sorrowful 
one. At that time everyone had to go to one 
church and to pay to help support it. Many 
people disliked being obliged to attend a 
church in whose teachings they did not wholly 
believe, but only a few had the courage to say 
so. These few, mostly poor men, established 
a little church of their own where they could 
have such simple services as they believed in. 
In our own day there are many such separate 
small meetings of people who do not believe 
quite as our churches do. These people are 
free to have such gatherings and to do and 
say what pleases them if they are orderly and 
peaceable. Three hundred years ago every- 
thing was different. These few poor people 
were forbidden to come together, and when 
they disobeyed, their meetings were broken 
up by soldiers and they were punished by 
being fined and imprisoned. This treatment 



4 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

drove them to the resolution of leaving Eng-^ 
land for Holland. 

To migrate to Holland, of itself, was a 
great h-ardship. Most of them had homes 
and were living in the same places where 
their fathers and grandfathers had lived be- 
fore them. They sold these homes and 
their belongings to get money for going. 
What a hard thing it must have been for 
them to think of giving up all their comfort- 
able things, to go to a strange country where 
even the language was different from their 
own English tongue. The next step was to 
get a ship to carry them to Holland. They 
were not allowed to leave peacefully, how- 
ever. The authorities hindered their going 
by every means in their power. No English 
ship owner or captain dared to carry them, 
so they tried to engage a Dutch boat. 

William Bradford, who was one of these 
pilgrims, wrote the best history of the Plym- 
outh Plantation. In it he tells of some of 
the difficulties they met with. 



THE EMIGRANTS 5 

*• There was a large company of them purposed to 
get passage at Boston in^incolnshire, and for that end 
hired a shipe, wholy to themselves, and made agreement 
with the maister to be ready at a certaine day, and take 
them and their goods in at a conveinente place, where 
they would all attende in readiness. So after long 

, waiting & large expences, he came at length and toke 
them in in ye night. But when he had them & their 
goods abord, he betrayed them, having beforehand 
complotted with ye searchers & other officers so to 
doe ; Who tooke them, and put them into open boats, 

' & ther rifled (robbed) and ransacked them, searching 
them for money ; and then carried them back into ye 
towne, & made them a specktacle to ye multitude, 
which cam flocking on all sides to behold them. Being 
thus first rifled and stripte of theur money, books and 

1 much other goods, they were comitted to warde (prison). 
Ye issue was that after a months imprisonmente, ye 

1 greatest part were dismiste & sent to the places from 

' whence they came. 

Another attempt to get away from Eng- 
land had even a more sorrowful ending. A 
I large company had bargained with a Dutch 
sailing master and were to meet his vessel at 
a place on the coast where there was a large 
common from which they could be taken to 



6 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

the vessel in small boats. The first part of 

the plan was carried out. Most of the men 

had been taken to the vessel, when its master 

" spied a great company, both horse and 

foote, with bills and guns & other weapons ; 

for the country was raised to take them." 

The Dutchman was badly frightened, weighed 

his anchor, hoisted his sails, and sailed away. 

Bradford tells the rest of the story in a 

moving way : 

But ye poore men which were gott abord, were in 
great distress for their wives and children, which they 
saw thus to be taken, and were left destitute of their 
helps ; It drew tears from their eyes, and anything 
they had they would have given to have been ashore 
againe ; but all in vaine, ther was no remedy, they 
must thus sadly part. 

Meantime the poor women and children 

who had been left behind were deserted by 

the few men who had been left, and were 

taken from one justice to another; no one 

knew what to do with this crowd of helpless 

ones who had no homes to go to, no husbands, 

or fathers to defend them. 




The Poor Women and Children Were Taken from One 
Justice to Another 



8 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

At last, "they were glad to be ridd of them 
on any terms," though Bradford says, "In 
the meantime they (poor soules) indured 
misery enough." The historian ends his ac- 
count of the trouble in getting away from 
England thus : "And in ye end notwith- 
standing all these stormes of oppossition, 
they all gatt over at length, some at one time 
and some at another, and mette togeather 
againe according to their desires, with no 
small rejoicing." When we think that the 
man who wrote these words was one of the 
very number who suffered so much perse- 
cution, Mr. William Bradford, afterward gov- 
ernor of the colony, we understand better 
the "no small rejoicing" with which these 
Pilgrims found themselves all together at 
last in Holland, the land where they found 
freedom to worship as they would. 

There they lived for twelve years in peace 
and comfort. Then the little children who 
had clung, crying, to their mothers as they 
saw the ship sail away carrying their fathers, 



THE EMIGRANTS 9 

had grown to be large boys and girls. They 
had been in the Dutch schools, where they 
had learned to speak the language of the 
country. In their games, too, and in all 
their intercourse with schoolmates the Dutch 
language was used. They were in danger of 
forgetting their English tongue. This was 
unbearable to those English fathers and 
mothers who loved England though they had 
left her. They decided that they must move 
again, and this time a long, long journey was 
to be taken, across the sea to the shores of 
North America. 



CHAPTER II 

The Voyage and First Winter 

Thus, for the sake of the children, was 
the voyage of the Mayflower undertaken. 
The story of that voyage is best told in a 
book sometimes called The Log of the May- 
flower. It is a careful account of all that 
happened on the way and of much that came 
after their landing at Plymouth. The writer 
was the same Mr. William Bradford from 
whom we have quoted. Is it not a wonder- 
ful thing that the manuscript of the book 
has been kept for near three hundred years, 
and that we may see in his own handwriting 
and read in his own words what this Pilgrim 
wrote ? The manuscript belongs to the State 
of Massachusetts and is deposited in the 
Library at Boston. 



THE VOYAGE AND FIRST WINTER u 

The voyage was a stormy one and they 
were "not a little joy full" when they sighted 
the land called Cape Cod. There is a story 
that the women on the ship begged a boat 
of the captain that they might go on shore 
to wash the dirty linen which they had been 
unable to do during the voyage. We may 
fancy these Pilgrim mothers near the spot 
where stands now the great monument on 
Cape Cod, doing their homely, thoughtful 
work for the children. They were thankful 
no doubt to set foot on dry land again. So 
while the men were exploring the coast, in 
hope of finding a good landing place, they 
accomplished their task. 

The men, meantime, found no good place 
to settle, neither was the harbor deep enough 
for large boats, and it was decided to sail along 
the coast northward. So after much anxious 
watching the shore they came into Plymouth 
harbor. Bradford closes his story thus : 
"On ye 16. of Desem, ye wind came faire, 
and they arrived safe in this harbor. And 



12 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

after wards tooke better view of ye place, 
and resolved wher to pitch their dwelling ; 
and ye 25. day begane to erect ye first house 
for comone use to receive them and their 
goods." 

There were thirty children, according to 
Bradford's list of Mayflower passengers, who 
came to this wild and desolate place in the 
wintry December weather. Two babies had 
been born during the voyage, one Oceanus 
Hopkins named in honor of his birthplace, 
the other Peregrine White, whose name means 
wanderer or pilgrim. The cradle of this 
youngest Pilgrim is still kept in Plymouth. 
When we see such things as this small wooden 
cradle we seem to be nearer to those days, 
nearly three hundred years away. 

It was for the sake of these children the 
parents had braved the dangers of the ocean 
and the perils of the shore. They wanted 
them to grow up away from the temptations 
of the city streets and the association with 
worldly companions. Bradford says, when 



THE VOYAGE AND FIRST WINTER 13 

he is giving the reasons for their departure 
from Holland: "But that which was more 
lamentable, and of all sorrowes most heavie 
to be borne, was that many of their children, 
by those occasions, and ye manifold tempta- 
tions of the place, were drawn away by evill 
examples into extravagant and dangerous 
courses, getting ye raines off their neks & 
departing from their parents, to ye great 
greefe of their parents and dishonour of God." 
The early days of the Plymouth colony 
were, however, very hard on the little children 
and many mothers must have looked back 
with longing to the comforts of their stay in 
Holland, as they watched their precious little 
ones sicken and die in the harsh climate. 
Large families came to the settlers, but many, 
many little ones died almost as soon as they 
were born. The lack of medical care, the 
dreadful doses they were compelled to take, 
because the fathers and mothers knew noth- 
ing better, all of these were hard for the 
babies. 



14 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

There was, however, another trial which 
was even more dreadful ; the Puritan children 
had to be baptized a few days after they were 
born, and baptized in the meetinghouse. 
Now this was a barn-like place because it was 
unheated, and bare of any decoration such 
as make beautiful so many of our churches. 

Sometimes the ice had to be broken in the 
christening bowl before the water could be 
used for its sacred purpose. Judge Sewall of 
Boston makes this entry in his diary: "A 
very extraordinary Storm by reason of the 
falling and driving of Snow. Few women 
could get to meeting. A child named Alex- 
ander was baptized in the afternoon." He 
tells also about his own baby, of four days old, 
shrinking from the icy water, but not crying. 

Judge Sewall, a famous Puritan, wrote a 
diary for his own use and pleasure, which 
has been a great help to us in learning some- 
thing of the life of those days, and it is for- 
tunate that the making of diaries was a cus- 
tom that even the children copied. There 



THE VOYAGE AND FIRST WINTER 15 

were no newspapers in those days to record 
the events of daily living. I think no news- 
paper, however, would have told the story of 
this Puritan baby "who shrank from the icy 
water, but did not cry" as this father told 
it. It shows his own strong faith as well as 
his pride in the baby. 

They died of all sorts of dreadful diseases, 
those poor little children. Sore throat, fevers, 
and smallpox carried them off even if they 
lived after baptism. Very little was known 
in those days of the prevention of disease. 
We, in the twentieth century, are only now 
learning facts of which those fathers and 
mothers knew nothing. Our children must 
have plenty of air and light, which they 
could not have had in their hastily built 
small shelters. Then they had no real drain- 
age and we have learned how necessary that 
is to health. Even in very poor districts 
the modern city has great sewers to carry off 
the filth from streets and houses, because 
we know the importance of such cleanliness 



16 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

to health. Much of the mortality of both 
grown people and children was due to lack 
of knowledge, and the children suffered most. 
Think of the pain of mothers so helpless to 
relieve and save ! An instance is given of 
one mother, who in nine years lost five little 
ones, and out of six had only one child left. 

We cannot wonder that the children died 
when we read of the medicines with which 
they were dosed. Snail water was used as 
a tonic ; Venice treacle which was made of 
preserved vipers with twenty other ingredi- 
ents was another of the most revolting rem- 
edies. Rickets was a new disease which had 
not been known in England. Here is a pre- 
scription given by a physician for its cure : 

Dip the child in cold water, naked in the morning, 
head foremost in cold water, dont dress it Immediately 
but let it be made warm in ye cradle & sweat at least 
half an hour. Do this 3 mornings going & if one or 
both feet are cold while other parts sweat, Let a little 
blood be taken out of ye feet ye 2d morning, and it 
will cause them to sweat afterward. 



CHAPTER III 

Little Pioneers 

It was fortunate for the future of the colony 
that in spite of so many deaths there were 
large families in every house. Sir William 
Phips was one of twenty-six children. Ben- 
jamin Franklin had sixteen brothers and 
sisters. Cotton Mather, the famous divine, 
had fifteen children. These large families 
were thought to be a blessing. The children 
were trained to work and to be helpful, and 
we may imagine what fun and frolic they had 
when work was done, with a dozen brothers 
and sisters to play games. 

I suppose they must have had " nicknames" 

as most boys and girls have nowadays ; 

otherwise we could never fancy their playing 

games at all. Here are some of the baptismal 

c 17 



1 8 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

names given by the good Puritan fathers 
and mothers : Experience, Deliverance, Pre- 
served, Waitstill, Sobriety, Truegrace, En- 
durance. Yet, there were some beautiful 
names not uncommon, as Hope, Grace, 
Patience, Joy. The most remarkable name I 
have heard is Zurishaddai, meaning the "Al- 
mighty is my rock." 

Better times were coming for the children, 
as well as to the grown people after that 
first long hard winter at Plymouth. How 
happy the children must have been when the 
spring sunshine and flowers came! No longer 
was it necessary to stay in small rooms where 
the snow banks outside sometimes darkened 
the windows ! When tasks were done there 
were interesting things out of doors. Some 
of the flowers were old favorites, but there 
were many and lovely new ones. No haw- 
thorne bushes, but pussy willows ; no daisies, 
but the sweet arbutus hiding away under the 
last year's leaves. 

To be sure children must not go far away 



LITTLE PIONEERS 19 

from the door of their homes. They had 
always before them the fear of the savages, 
though Squanto and Samoset, two good In- 
dians, had made friends with them and had 
tried to show kindness to them. A little 
story is told that goes to show how real was 
this fear and that even the children had to 
be brave in those days. 

During the first year of the settlement a 
little girl had been left to keep house with 
her small brother and sister. The father 
was away at work in the forest ; the mother 
had gone on an errand to a neighbor's house 
some distance away. The child was busy 
about the great fireplace tending to some 
cooking which had been left for her to do. 
The little ones played about the floor. Proud 
of being left a little house mother and sing- 
ing, maybe, a hymn to show her joyful heart 
she went about her tasks or played with the 
children. Then suddenly the little maiden 
noticed that the room was somehow dark- 
ened. She looked up at the small window, 



20 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

and for a minute stood dismayed. There, 
looking in straight at her, was an Indian, his 
ugly painted face and headdress of feathers 
filling the window. While she looked, he 
grunted and moved away. The door was 
barred as it had been since she had been alone, 
so that in a moment she knew what to do. 
She turned upside down the great brass kettle 
on the hearth and made the little ones lie 
close on the floor under its shelter. Then, 
with great pains she got down a big shot- 
gun from the wall and thrust it through the 
window. She knew Indians were afraid of 
the guns of the white men. There the little 
heroine stood, for two hours, keeping guard, 
till the father came running to her relief. 
The story shows why the children feared 
these savage, unknown people of the forest. 

As the settlers came to know the Indians 
better much of this dread was lost. Two 
Indians, Squanto and Massasoit, who were 
friendly, secured from most of the tribes near 
them the friendship to the newcomers. So 



LITTLE PIONEERS 21 

after a time the Pilgrim children lost their 
fear and even made friends with these dark, 
strange people. Everything, too, brightened 
with the coming of the summer. When the 
cold snow had melted from the ground the 
men were able to build better homes and 
to clear the ground for planting crops. With 
courage and energy that could not fail to be 
rewarded with success, they worked to make 
homes in the new land. 

We may be sure the children shared in 
these improved conditions. Better food and 
plenty of it, liberty to run and play in the 
forest made their lives happier. Then, like 
mothers the world over, these Puritan 
mothers found time to weave, to quilt, to 
embroider little clothes and blankets and 
caps, many of which have been saved to the 
present day, after having been used by gen- 
erations of children. Some of the little blan- 
kets were of costly material as well as beau- 
tiful workmanship. The christening blanket 
of Governor Bradford of Plymouth colony 



22 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

still exists. It is made of crimson silk, richly 
embroidered. We think of Governor Brad- 
ford as the wise governor who dealt with such 
strength and patience with all the difficulties 
of the new government. Think of him as 
the little baby in old England whose baby 
garments were so valued as to be brought 
over on the Mayflower ! Many dainty little 
dresses of linen are still treasured in homes 
and museums, that were worn by these little 
ones so long ago. 

They were rocked in cradles, these Puritan 
babies, an indulgence hardly allowed to ba- 
bies nowadays. Some 
of the cradles were 
prettier than the frail 
wicker bassinets of to- 
day. Many of the 
heavy hooded wooden 
ones are found in the 

A Filgrim Cradle 

garrets of New Eng- 
land families. A very famous one is that 
of Peregrine White, who Bradford says "was 




LITTLE PIONEERS 23 

borne a shipboard." It was made in Hol- 
land and was brought over in the Mayflower. 
It may be seen in Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth 
where are so many priceless Pilgrim posses- 
sions. Another wicker cradle is preserved 
in Essex Institute in Salem. I should think 
the prettiest of them all must have been those 
that were made of birch bark and swung 
between two poles. 

Now what did they have to eat — these 
little Puritan children ? A famous English 
( writer on education in the seventeenth cen- 
1 tury recommends small beer, brown bread, 
J and cheese as proper articles of food for grow- 
ing children. American children had simpler 
1 food ; milk to drink was plentiful. Among 
the newer articles of diet were preparations 
from Indian corn, such as samp, hominy, 
succotash, and beans, all used by the Indians, 
but new to the white people. Then there 
was the great variety of fruits and berries, 
most of them larger and finer than in the old 
home. Think of the delights of "berrying" 



24 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

for wild grapes, blackberries, and beach 
plums ! Children had plenty of sweets, too, 
— candied lemon peel, macaroons, sugared 
almonds. We are glad to believe Judge 
Sewall's children (fifteen of them) were al- 
lowed to have this last-named dainty, as he 
mentions it more than once in his diary. 
In later colony days strings of rock candy 
came from China. It is reported that a ship 
came into port with eighty boxes of sugar 
candy and sixty tubs of rock candy. No 
wonder a writer of colonial days says that 
sweets were much more common in America 
than in England ! Not all this candy, how- 
ever, could equal the new dainty, maple 
sugar, unknown in England or Holland, but 
plentiful in the New World. Indians taught 
settlers how to make and use it, and of all 
the good things to eat for which they had to 
thank their savage neighbors, we may believe 
the children liked it best. 



CHAPTER IV 

Children's Games 

Children of the twentieth century will be 
curious about the games of the small Puritans. 
There is one name of a boy on the National 
Monument to the Pilgrims at Plymouth. It 
is that of John Cooke, aged twelve, who came 
in the Mayflower with his father, leaving the 
mother and younger children in Holland. 
What did John find that was fun for a boy to 
do ? There is a little girl in a picture at 
Plymouth, too, — a little Puritan maid, in 
long gown and close cap, — that makes us 
ask ourselves the same question. She is 
looking up into the face of Samoset, the first 
Indian visitor, keeping tight hold of her 
father's hand — half afraid yet very curious. 
From what game had she been called to see 

25 



26 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

this strange visitor ? And what wonderful 
plays might she not "make up" later! Per- 
haps, she had been playing "house" as our 
little girls do, only with a spinning wheel as 
part of furnishing. As for the boy who is 
in the picture, we know what game he would 
play — with bow and arrows and marching 
and capture. 

But though we may only fancy what these 
small Pilgrims played, because there is no rec- 
ord made of their doings, we may be sure 
that from that very first delightful spring day 
when the children ventured out of the small 
dark houses, there were games. Some of these 
houses are still standing. They have small, 
low, dark rooms, great beams, and little orna- 
ment anywhere. Some of them are the 
Alden house at Duxbury, the Fairbanks 
house at Dedham, and one in Marshfield, 
all nearly three hundred years old, and in 
two of them descendants of the builders 
still live. 

These houses must all have been sur- 



CHILDREN'S GAMES 27 

rounded by the finest possible playgrounds 
for the children. They were built on slight 
elevations of land, and all about them 
stretched acres of field and meadow. Though 
fathers and mothers were too busy and 
perhaps too serious to keep record of the games 
of the children, does any boy or girl doubt 
that they had grand times in their big play- 
grounds ? The fathers may have frowned a 
little and called the play time, waste time ; 
but the mothers smiled on the children as the 
sun smiled, and thanked God for happiness 
and health in the new land. 

They played new games probably — In- 
dian surprises, defending play forts, and sol- 
diering. They had old games, however, many 
of them brought from England and Holland 
that generations of children had played be- 
fore them. Do you know that games are 
the oldest of things ? — things not written 
down in books and learned, but just told 
from child to child, and so handed down 
through the generations. "Tag," of course, 



28 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

of all the different kinds is played to-day as it 
was played centuries ago. Here is a list of 
some games played by the children of the 
colonies : Thread the Needle, Marbles, 
Whoop and Hide, Blindman's Buff, Base- 
ball, Leap Frog, and others which we do not 
know so well. 

Fifty years ago, at recess time on a public 
school playground, I learned some of the sing- 
ing games which were favorites of these Amer- 
ican colonial children: "Green gravel, green 
gravel, the grass is so green" ; " Oats, pease, 
beans, and barley grows"; "Ring around a 
rosy"; "Here I brew, here I bake, here I 
make my wedding cake"; "Little Sally 
Waters sitting in the sun." Such old games 
are still played and enjoyed in many of the 
rural schools — the very same games which 
these little colonial children played hundreds 
of years ago ! 

Coasting seems to have been more general 
in New York than in New England where it 
was rather frowned upon, perhaps because of 



CHILDREN'S GAMES 29 

its dangers. What delightful slides the New 
Englanders missed down the splendid hills 
which are everywhere in that region ! In 
New York attempts were made to control 
the coasting by law. At one time the con- 
stables at Albany were ordered to seize and 
break up the "slees on which boys and girls 
ryde down the hills." At another time it is 
recorded that if a boy were caught coasting 
on Sunday he had to forfeit his hat ! That 
seems a strange punishment for the offense. 
I wonder which the boy would prefer to suf- 
fer — the loss of his hat or of his "slee." 

Football was played in the colonies. It 
was a favorite game. The game as played 
in the seventeenth century is described thus 
by a French traveler: "It is a leather ball 
about as big as one's head, filled with wind. 
This is kicked about from one to the other in 
the streets by him that can get it, and that 
is all the art of it." Boys and girls of to-day 
will decide that the French traveler doesn't 
know much about football ! That it was 



30 



WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 



played very differently, even in earlier times, 
we know from a book written against the 
abuses of games, by one Philip Stubbes who 
wrote in 1583. This is what he says about 
football: "For as concerning football play- 
ing I proteste unto you that it may rather 
be called a friendlie kind of fighte than a 
playe or recreation — a bloody and mur- 
therin practice than a sport or pastime." 
He goes on to describe a kind of football 
which is indeed dangerous and unprofitable, 
but which has in it the same elements of 
courage and emulation which make our own 
college football games the chief spectacle and 
delight of thousands every Thanksgiving time. 
Indians played football in colony days ; 
whether in imitation of the whites, or as their 
own game, we do not know. A traveler in 
New England when Boston was fifty years 
old, tells the story of an Indian game which 
he saw played : 

There was that day a great game of football to be 
played. There was another town played against 






CHILDREN'S GAMES 31 

them as is common in England ; but they played with 
their bare feet which I thought very odd ; but it was 
upon a broad sandy shoar free from stones which 
made it easie. Neither were they so apt to trip up one 
another's heels and quarrel as I have seen in England. 

Governor Bradford and many others in 
Plymouth colony thought it wrong to have 
games on Christmas day. The very first 
Christmas day in the colony, some of the 
younger men who did not think it any harm 
to play, when they were called out to work, 
"excused themselves, and said it went against 
their consciences to work on that day." 
The governor excused them since they made 
it a matter of conscience. He must have 
changed his mind, however, for at noon when 
he came home from work and found them 
playing in the street, he "went to them and 
took away their implements and tould them 
it was against his conscience that they should 
play and others work." 

This action shows the same good sense 
and kindness which made him such a good 
governor for forty years. 








^ 








It Was against His Conscience that They Should 
Play and Others Work 



32 



CHILDREN'S GAMES 33 

In what a real, living way does this love 
for games seem to connect us with those who 
lived three hundred years ago ! Many things 
have changed, but not these great interests 
of the children. Then, as now, marble time 
came first, then kite time, top time, ball time, 
even the seasons for games being the same as 
to-day. 

Perhaps more wonderful still, the children 
have game laws of their own, handed down 
from one generation of children to another, 
taught by one generation to the next. 



CHAPTER V 

Puritan Playthings 

Girl children and dolls — that used to be 
the rule. Every little girl had a doll which 
she treated as if it were her own little girl. 
It seems that this is no longer true. Perhaps 
the fad of Teddy bears broke the spell, or the 
attractions of more modern playthings dis- 
placed the old love. Plenty of little girls 
nowadays who have dolls, care for them very 
little, and not at all in the old fashion. In- 
stead of rocking and dressing and playing 
house with them, they play stories in which 
the beautifully dressed, sweet-faced doll is 
the heroine, and the scenes which they imagine 
for them have no likeness to the old-fashioned 
tea-party game. Fifty years ago a girl's 
chief treasure was perhaps a rag doll — only 

34 



PURITAN PLAYTHINGS 



35 



very rich children had a Paris doll of china or 
wax. Happy the child whose mother or aunt 
or grandmother had the pattern by which to 
cut out of cotton and calico the model little 
women of the day. Clumsy and shapeless 
compared with the artistic dolls of the shops 
they were ; unbelievably ugly of face, but 
treasured and loved beyond all other toys. 

Did the little Pilgrims in those earliest 
days have any such pleasant toy or doll to 
console them for the loss 
of their comfortable Dutch 
houses, and to comfort them 
in their fears of the dark 
forests and their savage 
dwellers ? We may reason- 
ably conclude that some of 
those children had hidden 
away a treasured baby, 
though there is no mention 
in any record of it. Dolls 
were not unknown in England and Holland 
in that day. Indeed, much longer ago than 




An Old Doll 



36 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

that, dolls were loved and played with. In 
the tombs of Greece amid other things of 
value found in excavations, are dolls of ivory 
and wood with jointed arms and legs. 
Strange little reminders they are of how much 
in common have the children of all generations. 

Dolls came into childish favor in England 
in a curious fashion. The milliners and 
dressmakers used them to display the fash- 
ions. In the Gentleman s Magazine, Lon- 
don, September, 175 1, we find a news item, 
" Several dolls with different dresses made 
in St. Francis Street have been sent to the 
Czarina to show the manner of dressing at 
present in fashion among English ladies." 
This circulation of dressed dolls took the place 
of our modern fashion plates in ladies' mag- 
azines. 

These " babies" for models were made in 
great numbers for the use of milliners. As 
the best models were made in Flanders, they 
came to be called "Flanders babies." What 
good mother or grandmother first thought of 



PURITAN PLAYTHINGS 37 

their possibilities for the joy of the children 
will never be known, but they soon came to 
be used by hundreds in the play rooms of 
the homes. A funny little rhyme in this 
connection has been handed down to us. 

What the children of Holland take pleasure in making, 
The children of England take pleasure in breaking. 

Dolls in England were sold at fairs, and 
the best at Bartholomew Fair. These were 
called Bartholomew babies, and were cele- 
brated in poetry even. The English poet, 
Ward, wrote : 

Ladies d'y want fine Toys 
For Misses or for Boys 
Of all sorts I have choice 
And pretty things to tease ye. 

I want a little babye 

As pretty a one as may be 

With head dress made of feathers. 

These "babyes" were known in 1620, and 
some of the little Pilgrims may easily have 
had one. 



38 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

Two "old dolls" we have seen, are in 
queer contrast to the china babies of to-day. 
Each has a special interest on account of its 
dress. The pretty party dress with scalloped 
skirt, the dainty slippers, are all spoiled to 
childish eyes by the awkward "pantalets" 
coming below the dress skirt, which were the 
ordinary addition to the dress of little girls 
for many generations. The second little old 
lady doll has the apron, bag, and cap of the 
Puritan matron. 

The French dolls are much uglier than these, 
while the White House doll would be taken 
straight to the heart of any doll-loving little 
maiden of the day. She is so bright, so neat, 
so dainty a little body. She lived with the 
children of President John Quincy Adams in 
our White House at Washington. 

Another and very different kind of doll 
was made in the garden. Every respectable 
New England house had its garden attached. 
Every garden had its flowers, many or few, 
growing perhaps all together in a delightful 



PURITAN PLAYTHINGS 39 

tangle, prettier than our more formal beds 
and borders. There were so many and such 
common flowers that the children were free 
to play with them to their hearts' content. 
One of the sweetest uses to which they were 
put was the making of flower ladies or dolls 
with which to stage comedies and tragedies, 
— stories quite different from the simple 
house plays of the more substantial "babyes." 
The great red poppies made gay petticoats 
for dolls whose heads were the black hard 
under part of the flower. The hollyhock 
blossoms could be tied into tiny dolls with 
charming satin gowns — whole families and 
schools were thus made to play their parts 
in the story dramatized by the children. A 
little girl was forbidden to play with dolls on 
Sunday, but had the freedom of the garden. 
To her mother's horror she was discovered 
playing with these pretty flower ladies, ar- 
ranged in quadrilles and dances. She was 
playing party, on a long Sunday afternoon ! 
Other toys beside these dollies were made 



40 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

in the garden. Children love the dandelion 
nowadays — city children especially. There 
is surely nothing prettier than a bunch of 
kindergarten babies with their hands and 
frocks filled with the golden beauties. These 
riches are usually intended for " teacher," 
to whom they are brought in overwhelming 
quantities. We never see these children 
making dandelion chains with the long 
stemmed ones, however, or dandelion curls 
to wear behind their ears and hanging from 
their braids and ribbons. Small Puritan 
maidens had few beads and chains of gold and 
coral or crystal ; so they took real pleas- 
ure in adorning themselves with dandelions. 
After the flowers had lost their pretty color 
and had only their crown of gray down 
left, the children played with them in a dif- 
ferent way. The following rhyme tells its own 

tale: 

Dandelion the globe of down, 

The school boys' clock in every town, 
Which the truant puffs amain 
To conjure back long hours again. 



PURITAN PLAYTHINGS 41 

The ox-eye daisy made lovely chains, too, 
and the flowers were fortune tellers of as 
much weight as the gypsy camp. "He loves 
me, he loves me not," the little maiden 
chanted as she pulled the white petals one by 
one. With the magic words coming as the 
last petal fluttered to the ground, the fate 
was announced of the inquirer. "He loves 
me" was the triumphant conclusion when the 
game was played properly. 

Pretty boats were made of the large flat 
leaves of the "flower de luce." These had 
pennants, perhaps of ribbon grass. The little 
craft were loaded with flowers and set adrift 
on some brook or even running gutter after 
a summer shower. 

Children love the toys which they .contrive 
for themselves much better than the elaborate 
creations of the toy shops. To be sure there 
were no toy shops in Pilgrim days ; so little 
people had to make their own playthings 
or do without. I am almost sure, however, 
that these homemade toys gave more pleas- 



42 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

ure than the most perfectly made, modern 
playthings. The fun of making equals the 
fun in playing with them. Many chil- 
dren's games require an outfit quite elabo- 
rate, as those best loved games of " house" 
and "store." These outfits the little co- 
lonial girls were quite equal to providing. 
To-day our toy shops have completely fitted 
stores and doll houses enough to make any 
child scream with delight, but two days 
playing with them exhausts the pleasure. 
They are too complete, — the fun of making 
them has been taken away from the child. 
Of another sort entirely, were the homemade 
toys of the little Puritan girls and boys. 
I have heard of a milliner shop where the 
finest hats for ladies were made of large 
or small burdock leaves, garnished with 
wreaths of small flowers, feathers from 
the chicken yard, and ribbons and bows of 
striped grasses. The stock was further 
enriched by a variety of bur baskets filled 
with flowers and small fruits. That must 



PURITAN PLAYTHINGS 43 

have been a very pretty and satisfactory 
shop. 

The useful burs, moreover, could be made 
into furniture for the doll house, — beautiful 
chairs and tables. Acorn cups made part of 
the table set. Sometimes rose-hips were made 
into more delicate dishes with bent pin han- 
dles. The garden furnished the eatables, 
also, at these fairy feasts. Hollyhock and 
mallow " cheeses" were in great demand. 
Pumpkin seeds and rose leaves were favorite 
dishes, while sorrel and grapevine tendrils 
and pepper grass gave relish to the feast. 

Boys, too, were wonderfully ingenious in 
making for themselves the toys they wanted. 
Given a jackknife, anything was possible to 
the little Yankee. Jackknives were hard 
to come by to be sure, but nearly every boy 
managed to get one. The picture shows that 
they were rough and poor tools compared 
with the complete and shining knives of 
to-day. With them the boys made pop-guns, 
whistles of chestnut and willow, windmills, 



^ 













fw 



All Boys from Ten to Sixteen Should Be Exercised 
with bows and arrows 

44 



PURITAN PLAYTHINGS 



45 



water-wheels, and box traps. Toy weapons, 
bows and arrows, slings and clubs they made, 
of course. Bows and arrows had the charm 
of being real weapons still, for in 1645 the 




Skating (From Old Picture Book) 

court of Massachusetts ordered that all boys 
from ten to sixteen years should be exercised 
with bows and arrows. 

Even for the pastime of skating it is re- 
corded that a pair of skates used on the Hud- 
son was made of beef bones, just as, long be- 
fore, the English boys had fastened the leg 



46 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

bones of animals to the feet and pushed them- 
selves along with sharp pointed poles. The 
boys of New England were fortunate, how- 
ever, in being better provided with wooden 
skates shod with iron. Skating was a Dutch 
pastime which the Pilgrims had learned in 
their long sojourn in Holland. Some rhymed 
advice to skaters printed one hundred years 
ago, might be appreciated to-day : 

"Tis true it looks exceeding nice 
To see boys gliding on the ice, 
And to behold so many feats 
Performed upon the sliding skates, 
But before you venture there 
Wait until the ice will bear 
For want of this both young and old 
Have tumbled in, — got wet and cold. 



CHAPTER VI 

Sunday Clothes 

The hard times of the first years in New 
England did not last long. The settlers had 
come into a new, rich inheritance, and when 
the first difficulties were over, they began 
to thrive greatly. The fathers and mothers 
were picked men and women, gathered from 
many parts of England. They were strong 
in business ability, in foresight, and economy 
as well as in religion. They speedily estab- 
lished profitable trade with England, where 
they had partners to look after the selling of 
their products. They sent shiploads of fish 
and lumber. They began to build ships of 
their own in which they sailed far north to 
capture whales whose oil made their lights. 
Nothing was too difficult for them to under- 

47 



48 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

take, and success was certain to follow such 
energy and ability. They began to live com- 
fortably too, building good houses with large 
rooms and beautiful, simple architecture. 

Their children were 
no longer to be pitied 
as compared with 
those in the older 
countries. 

Portraits of the 
children, which have 
been kept in families 
all these years, show 
us how they looked 
and what they wore. 
The child portrait of 
John Quincy shows 
oneof the quaintest of 
these dresses, worn in 
1690. This is a baby boy's dress, modeled after 
the gowns worn by women in England and 
America at that time. Robert Gibbs' por- 
trait at four and a half years, dated 1670, 




Robert Gibbs, Four and a 
Half Years Old, 1670 



SUNDAY CLOTHES 



49 



shows the same general effect, with the more 
dignified Puritan collar, and minus the easy 
little hood of the younger child. These 
" coats" (short for petticoats, I believe) 
were worn till six or 
thereabouts, when 
boys exchanged 
them for the proper 
manly garments 
made very much 
like their fathers'. 
Not until Marie- 
Antoinette dressed 
the little Dauphin 
in clothes especially 
designed for him, 
so tradition says, did any one think of 
making boys' clothes so that they would 
suit active boys. To-day America leads the 
world in designing clothing suitable for chil- 
dren. 

A painting of a dear little giil is that of 
Jane Boner, eight years old, made in 1700. 




Jane Boner 



50 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

It must be remembered that these portraits 
were painted of children dressed in their best, 
not in their everyday, clothes. The lace 
with which Jane's dress is so prettily trimmed 
is of rose point, a beautiful and expensive 
lace. Other materials used were rich, as 
silks and velvets even for baby's clothing. 
One may suspect, with some reason, that 
mothers and grandmothers were making up, 
in their joy at dressing these little ones, for 
the deprivations of their own childhood. 
These children should have the dainty cloth- 
ing their elders had missed. We may be sure, 
however, that the Puritan fathers disapproved 
of such extravagance as strongly as possible. 
They made laws against " luxurious attire," 
and many offenders were tried and fined. 
Young girls were fined for wearing " im- 
moderate great sleeves," but I fancy they were 
still worn until they "went out of fashion." 

In New York no attempt was made to regu- 
late the dress of women and children. A 
portrait of the twin daughters of Abram Van 



SUNDAY CLOTHES 51 

Peyster of New York, five-year-old children, 
painted in 1729, shows beautifully dressed, 
sweet faced little maidens in red velvet 
trained gowns, with bare feet ! 

In Virginia wealthy people had most of 
their furniture and clothing sent from Eng- 
land. In Washington's house at Mount Ver- 
non, we have preserved for us much that is 
interesting and that shows really luxurious 
living. Washington's two step-children were 
more fortunate, probably, than most Vir- 
ginian children, if we call fortunate those 
who have the most beautiful clothes and 
the most refined care. Here is a list of 
clothes to be sent out from England for little 
Nellie Custis, aged six : 

1 coat made of Fashionable Silk 

A Fashionable Cap with Bib apron 

Ruffles and Tuckers to be laced 

4 Fashionable Dresses made of Long Lawn 

2 Fine cambric Frocks 

A Satin Capuchin ( ?) hat, and neckaties 

A Persian Quilted Coat 

1 pr. Pack Thread Stays ( !) 



i WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

6 pr. Leather Shoes 

2 pr. Satin Shoes with flat ties 

6 pr. White Kid Gloves 

I pr. Silver Shoe Buckles 

i pr. Neat Sleeve Buttons 



i 



Poor little Miss Custis, aged six ! It is to be 
hoped she was allowed to wear the cambric 
frocks and leather shoes once in a while, even 
with "stays" underneath. 

There was not much real play for these 
fashionable little Virginians, however. Co- 
lonial mothers were afraid the little girls 
would get too plump for beauty, and that 
their complexions would suffer without bon- 
net and gloves. Little Dolly Payne wore 
always long gloves and a linen mask, which 
I fancy covered the face except holes for eyes 
and mouth, and her sunbonnet was sewed on 
her head every morning ! Afterward when 
she was Dolly Madison, the wife of the Presi- 
dent, living in the White House and hang- 
ing her clothes to dry in its unfinished rooms, 
was she not glad to be grown up and to 



SUNDAY CLOTHES 53 

have to wear a mask only when she went 
riding, and a bonnet only when she chose ? 

Nellie Custis was a little girl to be envied, 
not because of the lovely things she wore, 
but because Washington loved her and she 
was a sweet and obedient daughter to him. 
In the Mount Vernon homestead her bed- 
room is kept just as she used it, and except 
for the high feather bed into which she must 
have mounted by steps, it is like any girl's 
pretty room. It takes little fancy to see 
its favored occupant trying on her "Fashion- 
able Cap and Bib apron" before the dress- 
ing table. 

That Boston little girls were not behind 
those of New York and Virginia in the ele- 
gance of their dress, is shown by the descrip- 
tion of Anna Green Winslow, a little Boston 
girl of twelve, written in 1771 : 

I was dressed in my yellow coat, my black bib 
and apron, my pompedore shoes, the cap my aunt 
Storer sometime since presented me with blue ribbons 
on it, a very handsome loket in the shape of a hart, the 



54 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

paste pin my Hon'd Papa presented me with in my cap, 
my new cloak and bonnet on, my gloves, and I would 
tell you they lik'd my dress very much. 

In another very frank little letter Anna 
tells us particularly how her hair was dressed, 
"over a high roll, so heavy and hot that it 
made my head itch and ach and burn like 
anything." On top of the roll was perched 
the new cap with "blue ribbons." Con- 
trast all this heavy, hot, uncomfortable finery 
with the simply cut, loose dresses worn by 
sensible little girls of the twentieth century ! 
Nor were the girls the only ones who suffered 
from such fashions. Records and portraits 
show that boys, like their fathers, wore costly 
wigs. Imagine our nine- and eleven-year- 
old youngsters submitting to such a fashion ! 

It was not until cottons from Oriental coun- 
tries began to be used that all the velvets 
and silks and laces were discarded in favor 
of these lighter, cooler materials. Boys' suits 
as well as girls' were made of calico and 
chintz and nankeen. A little suit worn in 



SUNDAY CLOTHES 55 

1784 was made of colored calico. It was 
very, very tight. But otherwise it is not un- 
like more modern clothes. 

A charming portrait is that of Jona- 
than Mountfort, seven years old, made in 
1753. This is one of Copley's portraits. 
Perhaps that is why we get so clearly the 
beautiful boyish face, with its quaintly cut 
hair, and the stately costume, made in exact 
imitation of those worn by the men of the 
time. It looks very warm and comfortable, 
compared with the calico trousers and blouse 
in the preceding portrait. Indeed both boys 
and girls must have suffered some from cold 
in these calico and nankeen garments, as 
they were worn in the winter as well as sum- 
mer — New England winters, too. 

Surely boys and girls have reason to be 
glad that all those experiments in clothes 
are ended, and that out of the endless variety 
of material and patterns, provided for them 
alone, sensible parents may and do select 
simple, comfortable, even beautiful clothes. 



56 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

Is it too much to hope that some day every 
American child may have clean, comfortable, 
good-looking clothes, and that they may 
live in houses that are open to air and 
sunshine, spacious enough for comfort and 
cleanliness ? 



CHAPTER VII 
Their Schooling 

It is worth while for boys and girls of to- 
day to fancy the schoolhouses of those early 
days and to compare their own advantages 
with those of colonial children. 

The law compelled the building of school- 
houses and the hiring of teachers. Lists of 
children were made in the towns, and the 
parents were compelled to pay, though we 
do not hear that the children were com- 
pelled to attend as in our own time. 

The schoolhouses were most of them small, 
poor buildings, many of logs, and with fur- 
niture of the simplest sort. The pupils sat 
on wooden benches without backs, when 
they were not standing in rows to recite. 
The windows were carefully placed so high 
in the walls that it was impossible to get a 
glimpse of the tempting world outside. In 

57 



58 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

winter, a great fireplace, as in the houses, 
furnished heat for one side of the building. 
The logs for the fire were furnished by the 
parents as part pay for the schooling. Alas 
for the child whose father was late in sending 
in his share of the fuel in early winter. The 
schoolmaster banished the little unfortu- 
nate to the coldest corner of the schoolroom. 

Wood was only one of the things which 
was given in payment for such ''schooling" 
as was to be had. Beaver skins, wampum, 
Indian corn were offered to the teacher in 
payment for his services. 

Paper was scarce and too highly prized 
for children to use. Even the ministers 
found it hard to get paper enough upon which 
to write their endless sermons. In New 
Hampshire and Maine the children used the 
plentiful birch bark for paper. What de- 
lightful books of sums and copies could be 
made of birch bark ! Lead pencils were not 
in common use and most of the work that 
has been preserved was done in ink. 



THEIR v H00L1 ■> 

( )m '>' ' • on ' A I he s< hool yeai remij 
isi oi oui own clau reunion! and reception, 
At the end of the term they I. 
ivhi< li i he ( hildren provided foi I hei 
and theii J n ■' -•• 1 1 hire, in 

■,' hool, I he ( hildren ta ved I h< 
from 1 he big firepla< e and sold l hem to 
money foi their 1 1 • hi< }j w 

ging 'I foi ; >]J (vho i 

ifj New York and Penn ylvania conditio 
rou< Ij lil . England i 

■ 1 hat pan 

on for theii ren, I. 

( >' rman settlers in I'' 

on on ound 1 hat it y/oui- 

children laz d with : ; 

A not* d aui hoi Knit I h> P< 

vania fan:.- ^ell 

Bool 

And they tlu 



60 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

In Virginia, there were few schoolhouses for 
a long time. People were not gathered in 
towns as in New England. Plantations were 
large and far apart. A saying of one of the 
colonial governors, in 1670, has been pre- 
served and shows his temper, though not 
that of the Virginians. He wrote home to 
England : "I thank God there are in Virginia 
no free schools nor printing, and I hope we 
shall not have, for learning hath brought 
disobedience and heresy into the world." 
Governor Berkeley's stupidity brought him 
into great troubles, as one would be sure 
it would, knowing his opinion about school- 
ing for the people. Luckily he did not rep- 
resent the people in his sentiments, for, from 
the first, parents who could afford it had 
their children taught at home, and even sent 
them to England for the higher education. 
This is what George Washington's father 
had planned for him as well as for his older 
brother, Lawrence. When the father died 
and all his plans had to be changed, George 



THEIR SCHOOLING 61 

was sent to a little school kept by one 
Hobby. This school, like some others, was 
the result of a few neighbors combining to 
pay a teacher. In this school and another 
like it, Washington gained all his book learn- 
ing till he was thirteen years old. His copy 
books and notebooks are still kept in the 
Library at Washington and are models of 
neatness and care. 

Boys and girls were often sent to other 
towns than their own for their schooling. 
Almost all the New England ministers took 
boys into their homes to teach. Wealthy 
planters also sent their children to Boston 
schools. Nobody asked in those days whether 
boys and girls liked being sent away from 
home, only whether it was best for them. 
Here is a letter from the grandmother of 
one of the little exiles: " Richard wears out 
nigh 12 paire of shoes a year. He brought 
12 hankers with him and they have all been 
lost long ago ; and I have bought him 3 or 4 
more at a time. His way is to tie knottys 



62 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

at one end & beat ye Boys with them and 
then to lose them & he cares not a bit what I 
will say to him." Many a good mother will 
sympathize with Grandmother Hall, the more 
so as she writes about him in another letter : 
"As for Richard since I told him I would 
write to his Father he is more orderly & he is 
very hungry and has grown so much yt all 
his Clothes is too Little for him. He has 
grown a good boy and minds his school and 
Lattin and Dancing. He is a brisk Child 
and grows very Cute and wont wear his new 
silk coat yt was made for him. He wont 
wear it every day so yt I dont know what to 
do with it. It wont make him a jackitt." 
Wise Richard Hall to decline the silk coat, 
even for every day ! Can't you hear the boys 
whom he had beaten with knotted kerchiefs 
making fun of the pretty and elegant little coat ? 
We get perhaps as real a glimpse of an- 
other boy from his own letter written from 
Stamford to his father in Albany, a little 
Dutch boy this, judging from the name : 






THEIR SCHOOLING 63 

To Mr. Cornelius Ten Broeck 

att Albany 
Honored Fethar, 

These fiew lines comes to let you know 
that I am in a good State of Health and I hope this 
may find you also. I have found all my things in my 
trunk but I must have a pare of schuse. And Mama 
please to send me some Ches Nutts and some Wall 
Nutts ; You please to send me a Slate and som pen- 
sals, and please to send me some smok befe, and for 
bringing my trunk 3/9, and for a pair of schuse 9 
shillings. You please send me a pare of indin's Schuse. 
You please to send me some dride corn. My duty to 
Father and Mother and Sister and to all frinds. 
I am your dutifull Son 
John Ten Broeck 
Father forgot to send me my schuse. 

The little New Yorker remembered his man- 
ners surely, as he took such pains to say 
" please" every time. We cannot but won- 
der why he wanted "smok befe," and if the 
"dride corn" was for popping. The letter is 
notable as showing that they used slates 
and "pensals" in 1752. The spelling was less 
conventional in those days so that we must 
not be very critical about the "Ches Nutts." 



64 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

Good boys, both John and Richard, and 
so exactly like twentieth century boys. That 
is, after all, I think, why we are interested 
in them. 

We must never forget that these poorly 
furnished log schoolhouses were the first 
free schools in the world, — the first schools 
for which the people paid by taxing them- 
selves. Harvard College had its beginning 
in 1636, and half the entire income of the 
colony was voted for its support. Although 
the lower schools were less generously pro- 
vided for, more was done for the education 
of the people by the people than had ever 
before been done. 



CHAPTER VIII 

How Girls were Educated 

The training of boys and girls was very dif- 
ferent in the colonies. We have seen what 
care was taken that the boys should have 
every advantage of the limited teaching of 
those days. Fathers and mothers wanted 
their boys to learn and were willing to spend 
money out of their scanty means that they 
should have the best education attainable. 
It was not thought to be so necessary that 
girls should have the same sort of education 
as boys. " Child," said a New England 
mother of those olden days, "if God make 
thee a good Christian and a good scholar, 'tis 
all thy mother ever asked for thee." We 
may be sure, however, that the child was a 
son. This mother would not have cared that 
f 65 



66 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

her daughter should be a "good scholar." 
She may have wished her to learn to read 
and write, possibly to count and make change, 
but some girls grew up without even so much 
learning. In the best families music and 
dancing were added but in "few and rare 
instances," as we learn from the wife of 
President John Adams. 

In New York and Virginia conditions were 
the same. Mary Ball, Washington's mother, 
wrote when fifteen years old : 

We have not had a schoolmaster in our neighborhood 
till now in nearly four years. The rector's assistant 
teaches school for his board. He teaches Sister Susie 
and me, and Madam Carter's boy and two girls. I am 
now learning pretty fast. 

Girls, it seems, were taught in little schools 
like this one of Mary Ball's, when parents 
were able to pay tuition. In the dame 
schools, as they were called, they were also 
welcomed if they could pay the small sum 
asked. The teachers of these schools were 
usually women who were also housekeepers 



HOW GIRLS WERE EDUCATED 67 

and mothers, who gave up part of their own 
houses for the schoolrooms. In 1641, in a 
town in Massachusetts, the people agreed to 
pay such a teacher ten shillings a year in ad- 
dition to the tuition paid by parents of the 
children, perhaps fourpence a week for each 
child. One hundred years later "a qualified 
woman teacher" commanded sixty-seven cents 
a week pay ! 

There were always in Boston classes and 
schools 'where girls of wealthy families were 
taught music and dancing, probably " deport- 
ment" also, and to these classes girls were 
sent from other colonies and even from the 
West Indian islands. Usually they boarded 
in private homes and recited in the classes. 
In all these schools, however, sewing, writing, 
dancing, and a little music were the only 
subjects taught. Latin and arithmetic were 
evidently unnecessary for girls, even very 
undesirable. 

One affliction under which these little 
colonial students suffered was connected with 



68 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

" deportment." An erect carriage of the body 
seemed especially desirable, and to ensure 
this, girls were obliged to wear a kind of 
harness somewhat like old-fashioned " shoul- 
der braces," besides being strapped to back- 
boards for some part of every day. Dr. 
Holmes has made fun of this painful prac- 
tice in a stanza which tells no more than 
the truth about this form of " education for 
girls ' ? : 

They braced my aunt against a board 

To make her straight and tall, 

They laced her up, they starved her down, 

To make her light and small. 

They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, 

They screwed it up with pins — 

Oh, never mortal suffered more 

In penance for her sins. 

The "pinching" and "singeing" may be more 
or less familiar to twentieth century girls, 
but no such awful contrivance as the back- 
board has been proposed for them. Tennis 
and basket ball with other athletic sports 
have taken its place as a means to the health 



HOW GIRLS WERE EDUCATED 69 

and strength which make for erect and 
graceful carriage. 

It is a matter of some surprise to find that 
so much pains was taken to teach dancing. 
The Puritan ministers, indeed, preached 
against it, and probably it was not so common 
an amusement in rural New England as in 
New York or Virginia. Then as now, how- 
ever, it was the popular pleasure for young 
folks, and in that at least girls were well 
taught and had a fair chance to excel the 
boys. Square dances and those in which a 
number took part were popular, rather than 
the waltzes and polkas of a later date. A 
little girl's letter to her father shows that she 
considered dancing part of a " liberal" edu- 
cation. 

Honor'd Sir : 

Since my coming up (to Philadelphia) 
I have entered with Mr. Hackett to improve my Danc- 
ing, and hope to make such Progress therein as may 
answer to the Expense, and enable me to appear well in 
any Public Company. The great Desire I have of 
pleasing you will make me the more Assiduous in my 



jo WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

undertaking, and if I arrive at any degree of Perfec- 
tion it must be Attributed to the Liberal Education 
you bestow on me. 

I am with greatest Respect, 
Dear Pappa, 

Yr dutiful Daughter 
Mary Grafton 

That is a better letter than any other we 
have quoted I think, and I cannot help won- 
dering if her teacher did not supply some of 
those big words, especially the spelling of 
them. The capitals which seem so numerous 
to us are used quite correctly according to the 
usage of that day. What interests one most 
in the letter is the spirit of the little " dutiful 
daughter." It isn't so common a thing in 
these twentieth century days to find gratitude, 
and care for the expense of education, ex- 
pressed to parents. 

To learn music was a much simpler matter 
in those days than now. The instruments 
were small and the range of notes very limited. 
Virginals, spinets, and harpsichords were the 
beginnings of the piano, shaped somewhat 



HOW GIRLS WERE EDUCATED 71 

like it, but with much less powerful tone and 
smaller range of notes. 

Many of these old instruments have been 
preserved in museums and in homes, and 
the dealers in antiques find them desirable 
property. The harpsichord bought for Nellie 
Custis is still kept at Mount Vernon. 

In all these boarding schools there was a 
"Commencement," held as now at the end 
of the year, not at the beginning. The 
"treat" of raisins and gingerbread prepared 
with such effort and pains by the children in 
the country school was far less pretentious. 
There is an account of one commencement in 
1784 which must have outshone many of the 
present day "finishing school" functions: 

A stage was erected at the end of the room covered 
with a carpet, ornamented with evergreens, and lighted 
by candles in gilt branches. Two window curtains 
were drawn aside from the center before it and the 
audience were seated on the benches of the school- 
room. The " Search after Happiness " by Mrs. More, 
"The Milliner,'' and " The Dove" by Madam Gerlis 
were performed. In the first I acted Euphelia, one of 



72 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

the court ladies, and also sung a song intended for 
another, but as I had the best voice it was given to 
me. My dress was a pink and green striped silk, 
feathers and flowers decorated my head ; and with 
bracelets on my arms and paste buckles on my shoes I 
thought I made a splendid appearance. In the second 
piece I acted the Milliner and by some strange notion 
of Miss Ledyard's was dressed in a gown, cap, hand- 
kerchief, and apron of my mother's, with a pair of 
spectacles to look like an elderly woman — a proof 
how little we understood the character of a French 
milliner. How my mother with her strict notions and 
prejudices against the theater ever consented to such 
proceedings is still a surprise to me. 

In another way, the training of these co- 
lonial girls was better than that gained by 
a knowledge of Latin and Algebra. Their 
training in all the arts of the home was thor- 
ough and intelligent. Cooking, cleaning, 
dressmaking were taught in the homes in 
the most practical way. Our twentieth cen- 
tury girls have these subjects, too, in many 
schools, but I am not sure that they are as 
thoroughly learned as in colonial kitchens. 



CHAPTER IX 
Colonial Textbooks 

I wonder if there are still in these United 
States of America people under twenty-five 
years old who learned to read in the A. B. C. 
way ; that is, learned every one of the twenty- 
six letters of the alphabet, before combining 
them into such thought-provoking syllables 
as ab, eb, ib. Did they then use these sylla- 
bles in words like abbot, ebb, ibis ? I fancy 
not, but that the next step in learning would 
be the cat, rat, dog page. This method is 
the very old one by which the little colonials 
learned to read. What a laborious deaden- 
ing process it is, none but those who have 
tried it know. 

The first textbook used was a hornbook. 
A picture will give you a clearer idea than 

73 



74 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 



•AAb.-Jef.fh.jklmnopil | 
I istm«WH & ieiou 

iABCDEFGHIJKLMNO 
JPQRSTL'YWWZ 
j & e i o u i neiou I 

d eJ id J ud 3t£>%%% 

..,*. N»m« of tin r«tii«r »„,1 uHK, 
" 5. n »ml of A* Holy Gh«t **« 

i/-v n Wl«r who" art 'm 
KlttrrtptlyKngdpmeoRic t\\ 
r»« oa&othasit ism 
H*BvH.Giveusit»isP«>y<Hu- 
c t\li\ Fnvocl and toryVt-us OIT 
i rr .vert's c.i as -* e Tot i-S %ei'i'.f PI 
s A.-.>\ 

Jl leaausnort.iido.i<rinjrt«ic 8 4 H | ; 



words can, — and you will not be likely to 
see a real one, as it is said that only three 
have been kept, out of the thousands that 
must have been in use in 
colonial days. A sheet of 
paper having printed on it 
the alphabet, some easy 
syllables and perhaps words, 
and the Lord's Prayer was 
I fastened on a board, five or 
six inches in length and 
two or three in width. The 
printed page was then cov- 
ered by a thin sheet of horn. This was yel- 
lowish in color, not entirely transparent, but 
clear enough so that sharp-eyed little ones 
could read the letters through it. The 
"book" was then bound together by a metal 
binding. Such a book could hardly be torn 
or soiled by restless fingers, and could be used 
by two or three generations of learners. It 
was often hung around the neck, and carried 
in that way was quite safe from being used 



COLONIAL TEXTBOOKS 75 

as a plaything or weapon on the way to and 
from school. Gilded hornbooks were sold 
in the cities as large as Philadelphia, and in 
England there were even silver and ivory 
"horns" used by rich children. 

Better than the common hornbooks, per- 
haps, were the letters made of gingerbread. 
You may imagine how eagerly the children 
learned their letters, when taught after this 
fashion, for when he had learned a letter, a 
child was allowed to eat it. Two lines in 
rhyme describing this curious way of learn- 
ing are : 

And that the child may learn the better, 
As he can name, he eats the letter. 

"Battledores" succeeded horns. These 
were made of cardboard sheets folded over 
to make a sort of book, and contained the 
same "educational material" as the horns. 
These were printed in vast numbers and by 
many publishers. The picture again, gives 
the clearest idea of this improvement in the 
means of education. 



yG WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 



He that ne'er fearm hU A 8 C, 



For ever will a Blockhead be. 



abedefgh ij klmno 
pqrfstuvwxyz. 



ABCDEFGHIJKLMN 
OPQRSTUVWXYZ 



ft ft h ix ff n a fli a a a 5c 



a e i 
ab cb ib ob ub 
ac ec ic oc uc 
ad ed id od ud 



o u y. 
ba be bl bo ba 
ca ce ci co cu 

da de di do du 



I 



N the Name of the Pa -mn, and of the 
Sok, and of the Holt Ghost. A rtn. 



I Pray Cod to bleft my Fa-ther and Mo* 
ther, Bio-ther* and Sifters, and all my good 
friends, and my E-ne-mies. A~me*. 



OUR Father which art in Hea 
ven, hal-Iow-ed be thy Name; thy 
King-domcomej thy Will be done on 
Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this 
Day our daily Bread* and forgive us our 
Tref-pafTes, as we for-give them that 
trefpafs a-gainft us ; and lead us not in- 
to Temp-tation. but deliver us from 
Evil; for thine is the King-dom, the 
Power and the Glo ry, for e-ver and 
e-ver. A-mn. 1*34567890. 



But be that learns thefe Letters fair, 




Shall have a Coach to take r he Air 
The Royal Battledore 



Now we come to the famous New England 
Primer, for one hundred years almost the 
only textbook in the colonies, studied by 
millions of school children, sometimes called 
"the little Bible of New England." It was 



COLONIAL TEXTBOOKS yy 

a little book, only five by three inches, con- 
taining perhaps eighty pages. It began with 
the alphabet followed by a table of syllables. 
This was called a syllabarium, and began with 
the familiar ab, eb, ib, proceeding to words of 
five syllables, such as abomination, morti- 
fication, purification. The most delightful 
and truly modern feature of the book was a 
set of little rhymes, illustrating each letter 
of the alphabet and accompanied by a poorly 
made little picture. They begin : 

In Adam's fall 
We sinned all, 

and end with Z : 

Zaccheus he 
Did climb a tree 
His Lord to see. 

There were a morning and an evening prayer 
for children and a grace before meat. The 
little prayer so well known, "Now I lay me 
down to sleep," was printed here. The Lord's 
Prayer and the Apostles' Creed were also in- 
cluded. More important still in those days 



78 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

was the Shorter Catechism of one hundred 
questions and answers, some of the answers 
being very long. These children were lucky 
in having only one hundred questions to 
answer, as in England a book of twelve hun- 
dred was in common use. 

As late as 1750, a few little stories were 
added to all this educational and theological 
material. A picture of the burning at the 
stake of John Rogers was the largest of the 
few and poor pictures. As the learning of 
the Catechism was enforced by law in New 
England in early days, it will be seen how 
useful the little book was to the whole family, 
and indeed it was most highly esteemed by 
all the grown up people. What the children 
thought is another matter, of course. As I 
have said before, no one asked what they 
thought or liked or understood. 

When this wonderful little book had been 
studied, children were supposed to be able 
to study grammar, — Latin grammar. Josiah 
Quincy gives us glimpses of what this sort of 



COLONIAL TEXTBOOKS 79 

schooling was like. He entered school at 
six years, probably having been prepared by 
the primer. He was given a book called 
Cheever's Accidence to commit to memory. 
He studied it through twenty times, without 
any understanding of its contents, eight hours 
a day. He says he mastered it. Later he 
became President of Harvard College. Per- 
haps the perseverance, the will to do distaste- 
ful work, may have aided him to gain that 
distinction. I doubt if anything in the book 
itself helped at all in his education. 

The subtitle of one of these old Latin 
grammars is a most amusing fancy: "A 
delysious Syrupe newly claryfled for Yonge 
Scholars yt thurste far the Swete Lycore of 
Latin Speche." The spelling in this title is 
no wilder than in most books of the day. 
There was no standard in England or the 
colonies, and though spelling was strenuously 
taught in some schools, its variety put to 
shame the phonetic spelling advocated in 
our own day. Lessons were recited in con- 



80 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

cert, and the master's ear was trained to de- 
tect an individual mistake. Fancy the roar 
of a sizable school ! 

The first English grammar was a little book 
of fifty-seven pages, and was quite simple 
compared with many later ones. It was 
called, The Young Ladies'' Accidence for the 
use of Young Learners, more especially for 
those of the Fair Sex, though proper for Either. 
So to the supposed lack of brains in the "Fair 
Sex," all the young folks were indebted for 
the simplicity and clear wording of this first 
attempt to teach English grammar. 

Arithmetic was the study of most impor- 
tance, as it still is in many schools. The 
manner in which it was taught, however, 
would be impossible in any modern school. 
There were no textbooks for the pupils. 
The teachers had written "sum books" from 
which they gave out rules and examples. 
An}' sort of explanation of the same was not 
expected, and the boy or girl was left to work 
out, unaided, the problem. Here is one 



COLONIAL TEXTBOOKS 81 

which would probably tax the wit of an 
eighth grade pupil in our day: "I did lend 
my friend 3/4 of a shilling 7 months upon 
promise that he should do as much for me 
again, and when I should borrow of him he 
could lend me but 5/12 of a shilling. Now 
I demand how long time I must keep his 
money in just Recompence of my loan, ac- 
counting 13 months in the year." 

Rhymed problems were supposed to be 
agreeable and easy. The one we copy is 
dated 1801. 

When first the Marriage Knot was tied 

Between my wife and Me 

My age did hers as far exceed 

As three times three does three. 

But when Ten years and half ten years 

We man and wife had been 

Her age came up as near to mine 

As eight is to sixteen. 

Now tell me I pray 

What were our Ages on our Wedding Day ? 

Of much earlier date is the old rhyme : 



82 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

Thirty days hath September, Aprill, June and No- 
vember, 

February eight and twenty alone, all the rest thirtic 
and one. 

Another which is not exactly arithmetic, 
but which expresses some modern as well as 
colonial feeling on the subject, dates back to 
1570: 

Multiplication is mie vexation 

And Division quite as bad, 

The Golden Rule is my stumbling stule, 

And Practice makes me mad. 

Geography and penmanship were the other 
subjects taught in colonial schools. The 
first was regarded as a mere diversion, and it 
was objected to as taking the child's atten- 
tion from " cyphering." Penmanship, how- 
ever, was very thoroughly taught and was 
really an accomplishment. The teacher was 
called a writing master, and his most im- 
portant qualification was that of a good writ- 
ing teacher. Some of the copy books of 
eighteenth century children show beautiful 
penmanship, and old letters and business 




Pens Were Made Usually by the Schoolmaster 
83 



84 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

papers which have been preserved show that 
good penmanship was nearly universal. Steel 
pens were unknown. The only pen was made 
from a goose-quill with the feathers left on 
the handle. These were made usually by 
the schoolmaster, as it must have been too 
delicate work for pupils to undertake. Ink 
was made also in the schoolroom and in fami- 
lies, by dissolving ink powder. This ink was 
often feeble and pale according to the making 
of the ink powder. Each child carried to 
school his own ink bottle or ink horn filled 
with ink. Sand was sprinkled over the wet 
ink instead of using blotters. These beau- 
tiful specimens of penmanship are, of course, 
the work of masters of the art, but they show 
ideals toward which the boys and girls labored. 



CHAPTER X 

Children's Handwork 

Penmanship is a kind of handiwork which 
is not perhaps so carefully taught as in co- 
lonial days. Letter writing is part of the 
English course in many of our schools, but I 
doubt whether as many letters are written by 
boys and girls nowadays as were written 
by the young colonists. Many letters and 
diaries have come down to us, some of them 
very formal in expression, having long words 
and queer spelling. Here is one written by 
a boy nine years old to his father : 

Dear Sir : 

I love to receive letters very well, much bet- 
ter than I love to write them. I make but a poor 
figure at composition, my head is much too fickle, my 
thoughts are running after bird's eggs, play, and 
trifles till I get vexed with myself. I have but just 
entered the 3d volume of Smollett, tho' I had de- 

85 



86 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

signed to have got it half through by this time. I 
have determined this week to be more diligent, as Mr. 
Thaxter will be absent & I cannot persue my other 
studies. I have set myself a stent & determine to 
read the 3d Volume Half out. If I can but keep my 
resolution, I will write again at the end of the week 
and give a better account of myself. I wish. Sir, you 
would give me some instructions with regard to my 
time, & advise me how to proportion my Studies and 
my Play, in writing. I am, dear Sir, with a present 
determination of growing better, yours. 
P. S. Sir, if you will be so good as to favour me with 
a Blank Book, I will transcribe the most remarkable 
occurrences I meet with in my reading, which will 
serve to fix them upon my mind. 

This boy's father was a college president and 
perhaps that accounts for the use of such un- 
boyish words as " transcribe" and "propor- 
tion," but the general tone of the letter is 
exactly what we might expect from any well 
taught Puritan boy of nine years. 

His request for a blank book in which to 
write "remarkable occurrences" was a com- 
mon one too, I fancy, as such books were 
much in use as diaries or "commonplace 



CHILDREN'S HANDWORK 87 

books." Notes of the long sermons were 
kept in them, religious reflections and some- 
times accounts of childish doings. One of 
these, written by a little girl, Mary Osgood 
Sumner, has a "black leaf" and a "white 
leaf" showing her own idea of the good and 
bad in her life. These are the entries on one 
"Black Leaf": 

July 9. Misplaced sister's sash. 

July 10. Spoke in haste to my little sister, spilt the 

cream on the floor in the closet. 
July 12. I left Cynthia's frock on the bed. 
July 16. I left the brush on the chair, was not diligent 

in learning at school. 
July 17. Left my fan on the bed. 
July 20. I was careless and lost my needle. 

Nothing so very black in the little Puritan's 
record is there ? In contrast with the doings 
of this black leaf are some extracts from a 
white leaf in the same book : 

July 8. I went and said my catechism today. Came 
home and wrote down the questions and answers, 
then dressed and went to the dance, endeavored 
to behave myself decent. 



88 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

July ii. I improved my time before breakfast; after 

breakfast made some biscuits and did all my 

work before the sun was down. 
July 12. I went to meeting and paid good attention 

to the sermon, came home and wrote down as 

much of it as I can remember. 
July 25. A part of this day I parsed and endeavored to 

do well and a part of it I made some tarts and 

did some work and wrote a letter. 
July 30. I was pretty diligent in my work today and 

made a pudding for dinner. 
Aug. 1. I stuck pretty close to my work today and 

did all that Sister gave me and after I was done 

I swept out the house and put things to rights. 
Aug. 8. I got some peaches for to stew after I was 

done washing up the things and got my work 

and was midlin Diligent. 

We could not have a clearer picture of the life 
of this little Puritan girl. How she judges 
her own " diligence" as "pretty diligent" 
and " midlin diligent." How useful and help- 
ful must she have been to the elders of the 
household. With what satisfaction did she 
make puddings and tarts and biscuit. She 
meant to be good and she was good, the dear 
little girl. I do not believe hers was a very 



CHILDREN'S HANDWORK 89 

exceptional record. All that we know of 
Puritan home and church life shows the in- 
fluences that would make character such as 
this little diary shows. One would certainly 
wish there had been more recreation, more 
childish fun and good spirits in their lives, 
but those qualities of diligence, helpfulness, 
and devotion to duty are as precious now as in 
those olden times, though I am afraid far less 
in evidence. 

Children were taught to do useful and 
practical work almost from the time they 
could walk and talk. Little girls could spin 
on the " great wheel" when they had to stand 
on a footstool to reach up. Little girls of 
six could spin flax and comb wool, while the 
work of the boys was well described by a 
Connecticut farmer boy : 

The boy was taught that laziness was the worst form of 
original sin. Hence he must rise early and make 
himself useful before he went to school, must be dili- 
gent there in study and promptly home to do " chores " 
at evening. His whole time out of school must be 



fS 



90 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

filled up with some service, such as bringing in fuel 
for the day, cutting potatoes for the sheep, feeding the 
swine, watering the horses, picking berries, gathering 
vegetables, spooling the yarn. He was expected 
never to be reluctant and not often tired. 

Hunting and fishing combined play and hard 
work and some gain for the boys, and maple 
sugar making must have been pure pleasure 
for both boys and girls. 

Girls, by the way, had plenty of so-called 
fancy work, less pleasurable one may think 
than the active work and play of the boys, 
but most diligently pursued, whatever we may 
think of the results as artistic products. 
Two charmingly quaint pictures illustrate 
these industrious little spinners and seam- 
stresses. Some of the ornamental work pur- 
sued with the greatest delight is particularized 
in an advertisement of a young ladies' school 
in Boston : 

All sorts of fine work, Feather Work, Painting on Glass, 
Turkey work for handkerchiefs two new ways, fine 
new Fasion Purses besides Plain work. 



CHILDREN'S HANDWORK 



91 



Pretty flowers for bonnets were made of tiny 
feathers. Very few of these have been pre- 
served as we may imagine. Painting on glass 
must have been an attractive pursuit, though 
too expensive for girls of ordinary means. 
The most univer- 
sal sort of elegant 
work was the 
sampler of which 
many have been 
preserved. The 
sampler was ed- 
ucational and was 
supposed to be 
beautiful. Little 
girls began by 
making quite easy 
ones. Perhaps the 
alphabet was 
worked first in simple stitches, then a sentence 
from the Bible, and then a picture of a bird 
or animal in impossibly bright colors ; the 
whole was finished with the name of the 



feifcl 




The Sampler 



92 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

worker and the date. A much more elab- 
orate and really beautiful piece of work is 
that of Lora Standish, daughter of Miles 
Standish, the Pilgrim soldier, still to be seen 
in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth. This is wrought 
with fine and difficult stitches and in well 
thought out coloring. 

The strangest use of this work was in 
" mourning pieces." This embroidery usu- 
ally was done on a black background and 
consisted of funeral urns, monuments, weep- 
ing willows, and sometimes a weeping figure. 
These pieces were a mark of respect very 
highly valued and were often framed like 
pictures and hung upon the parlor wall. 

Sampler verses showing originality were 
much used. The following is perhaps one 
of the more elaborate : 

Dorothy Lynde is my name 
And this work is mine 
When I am dead and laid in Grave 
This needle work of mine can tell 
That in my youth I learned well 






CHILDREN'S HANDWORK 93 

And by my elders also taught 
Not to spend my time for naught. 

The two following show the commoner rhymes : 

This is my sampler, 
Here you see 
What care my Mother 
Took of me. 

and this other not less quaint : 

Mary Jackson is my name, 
America my nation, 
Boston is my dwelling place 
And Christ is my Salvation. 

Knitting was a universal kind of work for 
children. Little girls of four years could 
knit stockings and mittens, and older girls 
were taught beautiful and fanciful stitches. 
Silk stockings with initials knitted into the 
fabric were part of the wedding outfit of one 
bride of whom we read. Piecing quilts was 
another very useful kind of "pick up" work, 
which gave opportunity for much ingenuity 
and taste on the part of the little workers. 



CHAPTER XI 
Spoiled Children 

Could it be possible that any children were 
unmannerly, self-willed, selfish in the sense 
in which we use the word "spoiled" nowa- 
days ? If we depend upon the records of 
colonial children, we find nothing to show that 
there were any. We may find some account 
of such children, however, in letters written 
from Boston about some little girls who had 
been sent to that city for training in private 
classes. 

It seems that many good families in Boston 
opened their homes as boarding places for 
children sent from southern colonies and the 
Barbadoes. These young people must have 
been very differently brought up from the 

94 



SPOILED CHILDREN 95 

little Puritans, and their actions were often 
trying to the good ladies who had them in 
their homes. 

A letter written by a Boston hostess to her 
niece tells the story of an adventure of two 
of her boarders which excited her anger as 
well as her pity. She says, "I could have 
cried for I really pitied them — nothing left 
fit to be seen." 

It seems the two sisters had permission to 
take a walk, — a long walk to a neighboring 
village. They started at sunrise of a Thurs- 
day morning, coming back Saturday before 
noon. Their hostess had trusted their good 
sense, I suppose, in the matter of clothes 
suitable for such an outing. Their ideas, 
however, were quite different from New Eng- 
land notions of fitness. They started, 
"dressed in their damasks, padusoy, gauze, 
ribins, plapetts, flowers, new white hats and 
black leather shoes." Their return was a 
shock to the good lady in whose house they 
had their lodging. She says : 



96 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

Never did I behold such distinction in so short a 
space — bottom of coat fringed quite round, besides 
places worn entirely to floss, damask from shoulders 
to bottom, not lightly soiled, but as if every part 
had rubbed tables and chairs that had long been 
used to wax mingled with grease — nothing left fit 
to be seen. 

These children were spoiled according to 
the Puritan ideas of fitness, neatness, and 
economy. In more serious ways, too, they 
showed their conceit and dislike of guidance. 
In the same letter in which Mrs. Deming tells 
the adventure of the walk and the spoiled 
garments, she complains of their shallow 
knowledge : "The eldest talks much of learn- 
ing dancing, music, the French tongue, &c. 
The younger, with an air of her own, ad- 
vised the elder to learn first to read English 
and was answered 'Law, so I can well eno' 
a'ready.' You've heard her do what she 
calls reading, I believe." She finishes her 
letter thus : "What signifies it to worry 
about beings that are and will be just so ? 
I can and do pity and advise, but I shall get 



SPOILED CHILDREN 97 

no credit by such like. Poor creatures ! Well ! 
we have a time of it !" 

The story of another little maid from 
Barbadoes shows the same self-will and love 
of finery. She was sent to her grandmother, 
Madam Coleman, to be cared for while getting 
an education. This lady had taken charge 
of little Sarah's brother Richard during his 
school years. This is the same Richard who 
spoiled so many " hankers" by knotting them 
at one end and beating the boys with them, 
and who would not wear the new silk coat 
that had been made for him. And this 
is the same good grandmother who so kindly 
and carefully trained him into habits of care 
and thrift that finally made of him a man 
of worth and influence. 

The little girl was eight years old when she 
came to Boston. She had with her a maid, 
and the remains of a great store of sweets 
which had been provided for her eating on 
the voyage from Barbadoes. The grand- 
mother's first letters to her son are very 



98 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

cheerful. She speaks of the little girl as 
"well and brisk." She must have been hav- 
ing a good time, too, as twentieth century 
boys and girls say. She made many ac- 
quaintances and we read of a feast given by 
her to them, where the " store of sweets" 
was finally finished. One would think she 
was very happily settled and likely to become 
a well trained little Puritan. 

This child of eight years must have sorely 
lacked good training, however, as she very 
soon left her grandmother's house without 
permission and went to board elsewhere ; 
the only reason she gave to her parents was 
that her grandmother made her drink water 
at her meals ! 

Her father was absent in London at this 
time and her brother Richard wrote immedi- 
ately to the grandmother : 

We are sorry to hear of her Independence in removing 
from under the Benign Influence of your Wing, and 
am surprised she dare do it without our leave or con- 
sent, or that Mr. Binning receive her at his house be- 
fore he knew how we were affected by it. 



SPOILED CHILDREN 99 

He goes on to say that he has written Mr. 
Binning to resign his sister with her maid to 
her grandmother immediately, and has also 
strictly ordered her to return, — 
which we hope she wont venture to refuse or disobey. 

We conclude that she did not disobey this 
command, as, some months later, her long- 
tried grandmother makes a complaint that 

Sally wont go to school nor to church and wants a nue 
muff and a great many other things she don't need. I 
tell her fine things are cheaper in Barbadoes. She 
says she will go to Barbadoes in the Spring. She is 
well and brisk, says her brother has nothing to do with 
her as long as her father is alive. 

Rather a saucy thing to say of a kind big 
brother, is it not ? 

It would seem that the father, when he 
came from England and was told of his un- 
ruly little girl's doings, took her part in 
some matters of complaint. He wrote to his 
mother that certain things which she had 
required were not "befitting children of their 
station." Instead of water, for instance, 



ioo WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

they should have wine and beer. Sally should 
also have a room entirely to herself as be- 
fitting a young lady. 

I do not doubt that the grandmother did 
all as the little girl wished, since the father 
seemed to uphold her in her requests, with- 
out considering whether they were reason- 
able. 

Sally was a bright little girl and in spite of 
willfulness, learned to sew, write, and dance 
very well. She grew up and married Major 
John Wentworth, and Brother Richard w r rites, 
"I heartily rejoice in Sally's good fortune." 

We are glad the little maid came out so 
well, and believe the good influence of her 
grandmother's Puritan household had much 
to do in making her life a long and happy one. 



CHAPTER XII 

Puritan Discipline 

A story was told me long ago, about a 
great grandmother of my own whose idea 
of discipline seemed to me very harsh and 
mistaken. One of her sons, a bright and 
active boy, refused one day to obey her in a 
slight matter. He must have been a little 
fellow as she handled him quite easily. She 
tied a rope about his waist and lowered him 
into an open well, holding him there just 
above the water until he "gave in" and said 
he was ready to obey her will. This was 
called " breaking the boy's will," and doubt- 
less some other mothers admired the strength 
of mind which enabled this lady to inflict 
such severe punishment. The boy grew up 
into a very good man, but a good deal of a 



102 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

failure in all practical matters. He lacked 
will power and energy as well as good health. 
I cannot help thinking that the harsh dis- 
cipline of that Puritan home had something 
to do with his failures. 

You will say, "What a contrast to present 
day methods!" Truly, and yet those par- 
ents were acting for what they thought the 
best interests of their children. There is much 
that is tender and high minded in the rela- 
tions between parents and children, as is 
shown in the letters and diaries of the last 
chapter, and we must not dwell on this 
painful side of family discipline. 

We may believe that parental love and 
deep religious feeling would make such pun- 
ishments endurable, but in the schoolroom, 
and with discipline in the hands of ignorant, 
sometimes brutal, schoolmasters we may well 
shudder at the results. The rod was every- 
where the educator, supposed to be the only 
agent for breaking and beating down "that 
stubbernes and stoutnes of mind" inherent 



PURITAN DISCIPLINE 103 

in every child. Punishments were not only 
cruel, but infinitely varied. The following 
account of one of these original and ingenious 
punishments is given by a pupil of the famous 
Boston schoolmaster, Ezekiel Cheever : 
I was a very naughty boy, much given to play, in so 
much that Master Cheever openly declared, " You, 
Barnard, I know you can do well enough if you will, 
but you are so full of play, you hinder your classmates 
from getting their lessons, therefore if any of them can- 
not perform their duty, I shall correct you for it." 
One day one of my classmates did not look at his book, 
and could not say his lesson, though I called upon him 
once and again to mind his book. Whereupon our mas- 
ter beat me. The boy was pleased with my being cor- 
rected and persisted in his neglect, for which I was still 
beaten and that for several days. I thought in jus- 
tice I ought to correct the boy and compel him to a 
better temper ; therefore, after school was done I 
went to him and told him I had been beaten several 
times for his neglect and since master would not cor- 
rect him I would and then drubbed him heartily. 

One feels a real satisfaction in that hearty 
drubbing ! 

There is no record of extraordinary cruelty 
in the New York schools. Perhaps we may 



104 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

accept Ichabod Crane as the type of master 
in this colony, — ignorant and selfish but not 
so unsparing and ingenious in punishment. 
There is a record of one German schoolmaster 
in Pennsylvania that contrasts cheerfully 
with the heartbreaking stories of New Eng- 
land schoolrooms. Samuel Dock tells his 
own story of his treatment of pupils. He 
drew pictures for them and taught them sing- 
ing. He made a careful set of rules for their 
behavior. His whole effort was to make good 
citizens out of a set of " brutish peasants," 
and his methods were those of kindness and 
interest in work rather than the stupid dis- 
cipline of most schools. He taught spelling 
and reading with much Bible instruction. 
He did not teach Catechism since he had 
pupils of many sects and denominations. 
One is grateful for a story of such a school 
and of such a teacher in the midst of so 
much that is revolting in the history of edu- 
cation in the colonies. This is his own ac- 
count : 



PURITAN DISCIPLINE 105 

How I Receive the Children in School 

It is done in the following manner. The child is 
first welcomed by the other scholars, who extend their 
hands to it. It is then asked by me whether it will 
learn industriously and be obedient. If it promises 
me this, I explain to it how it must behave ; and if it 
can say its A. B. C.'s in order, one after the other, and 
also by way of proof, can point out with the forefinger 
all the designated letters, it is put into the A-b, Abs. 
When it gets thus far, its father must give it a penny 
and its mother must cook for it two eggs, because of 
its industry; and a similar reward is due to it when it 
goes further into words ; and so forth. 

Cotton Mather, the famous Puritan divine, 
strongly opposed the constant use of the rod, 
both in homes and schools. His son wrote 
of him : 

The slavish way of education carried on with raving 
and kicking and scourging, in schools and in families, 
he looked upon as a dreadful judgement of God on the 
world ; he thought the practice abominable and ex- 
pressed a mortal aversion to it. 

The reason for all this "raving" and 
" kicking" in education is not far to seek. 
Those God-fearing parents were only anxious 



106 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

for the best and highest in character for their 
children, and, living themselves in constant 
fear of such wrongdoing as should doom 
them to an eternity of punishment, they 
knew no other motive for their children than 
the same fear of bodily pain and hardship. 
Governor Bradford writes in his beautiful 
way of the necessity felt by the tenderest 
parents to train their children in the best 
way known to them : 

As necessitie was a taskmaster over them, so they 
were forced to be such, not only to their servants but, 
in a sorte, to their dearest children ; the which as it 
did not a little wound ye tender harts of many a loving 
father and mother, so it produced likewise sundry sad 
and sorrowful effects. 

These effects he goes on to say were first, loss 
of health in the best and most helpful of their 
children, those who "lernde to beare the 
yoke in their youth" and were willing to bear 
part of their parents' burden ; these were 
bowed under the weight of the same and 
became decrepit in their early youth. 



PURITAN DISCIPLINE 107 

But that which was more lamentable and of all 
sorrows most heavy to be borne was that many of their 
children were drawn away by evill examples into ex- 
travagant and dangerous coarses, getting ye raines off 
their necks, and departing from their parents. 

Now which deserves most the sympathy of 
twentieth century people, overanxious parent 
or misunderstood child ? 

Another and far different means of dis- 
cipline was the religious training which was 
given in home and school. We have seen 
that Catechism was a part of every school 
course, so that the training in theology was 
well looked after. The use of the Bible in 
school and home was universal. In itself it 
was a treasure, won by untold suffering. 
They remembered that the bringing into 
England of Bibles had been forbidden in 
1633 and reading the Bible at their meetings 
sternly prohibited. Here in the new land 
they were free to read the beloved Book and 
to use it as the law of their lives. The chil- 
dren were taught to revere it as the chief 



108 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

thing in their experience, to read and reread it 
from cover to cover, Leviticus and Numbers 
as well as the Psalms and Gospels. Much 
of the reading must have been incomprehen- 
sible to the children but was struggled through 
as a duty. Much, however, must have ap- 
pealed to them and influenced them as the 
savage discipline of the schools failed to do. 
They knew and loved all the beautiful Old 
Testament stories, the more as their stock of 
stories was limited and poor. The effect of 
familiarity with the Bible upon their speech 
and writing in later days, the force and 
dignity of expression gained by such con- 
tinued study of the Book of Books has been 
noted by many writers. For my part, I like 
to think that the children found in the Bible 
a moral training broader and better than 
that taught in the schools. 

We would not use the Book in that way. 
We should fear that much would be dis- 
tasteful to childish thinking, much quite be- 
yond childish comprehension ; and indeed 






PURITAN DISCIPLINE 109 

there were effects that were deplorable be- 
side the entire lack of understanding. Judge 
Sewall, whose diary gives us so much of the 
home life of those early days, writes thus of 
one of his daughters, a loving, diffident, 
timid child. She was five years old when he 
made this entry : 

It falls to my daughter Elizabeth's share to read 
the 24 of Isaiah which she does with many tears not 
being very well, and the Contents of the Chapter and 
Sympathy with her draw Tears from me also. 

This Puritan father probably thought such 
sensitiveness commendable in the child, an 
evidence of that "fear of the Lord" in which 
they all lived. An entry in Cotton Mather's 
journal shows the same effort on the father's 
part to train the child to thoughts of painful 
things as a means of character growth : 

I took my little daughter Katy into my study and 
then I told my child I am to dye shortly and she must, 
when I am Dead, remember everything I now said to 
her. I sett before her the sinful Condition of her 
Nature, and I charged her to pray in Secret Places 
every day. I gave her to understand that when I am 








It Falls to My Daughter Elizabeth's Share to Read the 
XXIV of Isaiah." 



PURITAN DISCIPLINE in 

taken from her she must look to meet with more hum- 
bling Afflictions than she does now she has a Tender 
Father to provide for her. 

Cotton Mather lived for thirty years after 
this terrifying lesson to " little daughter 
Katy," long after the little one had died and 
so perhaps escaped the " humbling afflictions" 
he had tried to impress on her four-year-old 
mind. 

The Sabbath day discipline of children was 
especially hard on them I think. The Sab- 
bath began Saturday night, when all week- 
day occupations must be laid aside and chil- 
dren and grown people prepared for the long 
sermons of the next day, by study of the 
Catechism and theology. In the churches an 
officer called a "tithing-man" was in charge 
of all the younger people. The boys were 
seated together, often in the most uncom- 
fortable place in the church, sometimes on 
the pulpit stairs, sometimes in a high gallery 
away from all other worshipers. Thus 
treated, they gave the tithing-man plenty 



112 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

to do undoubtedly, so much indeed that assist- 
ants had to be employed in many cases. 
The duties of this unpopular official were 
numerous. He must keep out dogs from the 
meetinghouse, correct unruly and noisy boys, 
and wake up those who slept in the course 
of the two- or three-hour sermons. For all 
the purposes, he was armed with a long 
stick which had a knob at one end and a fox 
tail at the other. The knob was for the heads 
of "unruly" boys, the fox tail to tickle the 
faces of the unfortunate sleepers. Strangely 
enough, in spite of all this Sabbath-day dis- 
cipline, the boys were noisy and their fathers 
fell asleep under the most rousing discussions 
of theological topics. 



CHAPTER XIII 
Very Naughty Girls 

With all the severity of discipline for 
children practiced in these colonial days, 
some of the naughtiest, the most mischievous 
children that ever lived were those two chil- 
dren of Rev. Samuel Parris, pastor of the 
church in Salem village, and Ann Putnam, 
daughter of Sergeant Thomas Putnam of 
Salem village. These children were the origi- 
nators of the Salem witchcraft craze. They 
were nine, eleven, and twelve years of age, 
the two oldest of the group being seventeen 
and twenty years of age. 

What was witchcraft ? We must under- 
stand what is meant by that word, — what it 
meant to these seventeenth century people. 
In early times, and always indeed, it had 
i 113 



ii 4 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

meant direct intercourse with Satan, the 
great prince of evil. A witch or a wizard 
was a woman or man who had made a bar- 
gain with that dreadful creature, by which 
he or she gained great power of harm to good 
people on condition that their souls at death 
were to be delivered to the wicked one to 
be tortured through an eternity of agony. 
Many were supposed to have signed a book 
recording this compact, signed sometimes 
with their own blood. Witches were sup- 
posed to have unholy meetings with their 
master, in which they obeyed his orders 
and made evil plans. To these meetings, in 
the depth of the forest or in some lonely 
desert place, they came flying through the 
air on broomsticks. 

Some ignorant and simple people have in 
our own time equally absurd beliefs about 
the supernatural. The trouble with these 
people was, however, that everybody believed 
in this dreadful power of the Evil One and 
feared him as they feared God. Not only 



VERY NAUGHTY GIRLS 115 

in this lonely colony of the new world, but all 
over the world was the belief in witchcraft a 
very real and living thing. In every case, 
too, the penalty of the crime was death. 
"If any man or woman be a witch, that is 
hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit 
they shall be put to death." This was the 
language of the old colonial law, and it was 
substantially the same as in all the countries 
of the old world. 

The excitement at Salem was not the first 
outbreak of the superstition in New England. 
In 1648 occurred the first execution for 
witchcraft in the new world. Margaret Jones 
was tried and found guilty in Charlestown 
and was hanged. Governor Winthrop tried 
her case, and gives some account of it in his 
diary. He says the evidence against her was 
"that she was found to have such a malig- 
nant touch as many persons, men, women, 
and children, whom she stroked or touched 
with any displeasure, were taken with deaf- 
ness or vomiting, or other violent pains or 



n6 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

sickness." No man stood higher in the 
colony than Winthrop. The fact that he 
was so imposed upon, shows the strength of 
the belief in witchcraft shared by high and 
low, educated or ignorant. In 1679 occurred 
in Newburyport another notable case, that 
of Mrs. Morse who was tried, convicted, and 
sentenced to be hanged. Governor Bradstreet, 
however, granted her a reprieve until a new 
session of court, at which she was again re- 
prieved in spite of a protest from the House 
of Deputies. This action of Governor Brad- 
street entitles him to everlasting honor, as 
much wisdom and courage were needed to 
resist the overwhelming public opinion of the 
time. He was one of the few men in authority 
who dared to differ from the mistaken ma- 
jority. He cannot rank with Winthrop or 
Cotton Mather in mental ability, but he must 
have been their superior in clear common 
sense. 

Then in 1692 came the Salem cases, almost 
as dreadful as the Southern lynchings of 



VERY NAUGHTY GIRLS 117 

to-day. A very little of the painful story I 
am going to try to tell. 

In the family of the minister, Samuel Parris, 
were a daughter Elizabeth, nine years old, 
and a niece, Abigail Williams, eleven. They 
had two servants who had been slaves and 
were hardly civilized. Of course, they had 
the fascination for the children that anything 
so out of the common order of things would 
have, and no doubt the children reveled in 
the strange stories they listened to in the 
fire-lighted kitchen of evenings. Stories of 
ghosts and demons and witches they were, 
and after a very little the children were al- 
lowed even to take part in the savage cere- 
monies of incantation, — to practice what 
they had learned of the black art. We may 
fancy that they made waxen images of those 
who had displeased them during the day, for 
the pleasure of sticking pins into them at 
night, and wishing for every pin prick a sharp 
pain to their intended victim. This, I have 
read, was one of the most approved methods 



n8 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

of witchcraft. Savage play only that was, if 
it might have stopped there. 

The games went on, however, and it oc- 
curred to the children that it might be better 
fun to play that they themselves were be- 
witched. It began to be noticed that the 
children were behaving in a most unusual 
manner, " crawling into holes and creeping 
under stools and chairs, making antic gestures 
and talking foolish and ridiculous stuff which 
neither they themselves nor others could make 
any sense of." Even the Minister finally found 
out that something ailed the children and 
that strange doings were in his kitchen. 
The doctor was called and being unable to 
name any disease from which they were 
suffering, declared they were possessed of 
the devil — bewitched in short. Our doc- 
tors of to-day would understand such cases 
and deal with them intelligently. 

Immediately the whole community was 
aroused. Ministers and doctors and neigh- 
bors came to observe this nonsense of the 



VERY NAUGHTY GIRLS 119 

children, and all agreed that they must be 
bewitched. The Indian woman, Tituba, pro- 
fessed to know how to find the witches who 
were tormenting the children, but when the 
small hypocrites learned that she was really 
using some strange means to discover them, 
they were stricken with fear of what she 
might be able to do and declared that she her- 
self was the unholy creature who tormented 
them. They said she pinched, pricked, 
and tormented them, all of which she 
denied most earnestly. They also named 
two women as their tormentors, both old, 
sickly creatures, one of them having a bad 
temper. She was tried, condemned, and 
executed. A minister who was present at 
the execution told her as she was led to the 
scaffold, "You are a witch and you know 
you are a witch." The poor woman answered 
him fittingly, "You are a liar; I am no more 
a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take 
my life, God will give you blood to drink." 
The other woman accused denied all knowl- 



120 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

edge of witchcraft and all injury to the 
minister's children. She died in the jail in 
Boston a few weeks after her trial. The 
hardships and brutality to which she had 
been subjected were too much for this feeble 
woman of sixty years. She was truly one of 
the martyrs of this sorrowful crusade against 
the devil. As for the Indian Tituba, one 
feels as though justice would demand pun- 
ishment for her at least equal to that of the 
others concerned. Her testimony was quite 
evidently a tissue of lies, silly and contra- 
dictory. She was sent to jail, and finally 
sold into slavery as no one appeared against 
her. The good people and ministers were 
perhaps too much afraid of her Satanic powers 
to persecute her further. 

Ann Putnam, twelve years old, was another 
of this group of children who did so much 
harm in the world — more harm than per- 
haps any children ever did, before or since. 
Her name appears many times as accuser 
and complainant. One of the women whom 



VERY NAUGHTY GIRLS 121 

she accused was Mary Estey, or Eastey, and 
with her story we must finish a brief survey 
of the witchcraft craze as connected with the 
children. Poor children ! they were as much 
the victim of a community craze as the sup- 
posed witches who suffered death. 

Mary Eastey was a woman of fifty-eight 
years, the mother of seven children. After 
her first trial, which was of the usual sort — 
accusation and denial — she was released, as 
the magistrates were evidently unconvinced 
of her guilt. Two days afterward one of the 
older girls had a fit and was of course be- 
witched. Ann Putnam was sent for, I sup- 
pose, as an experienced witch hunter, to 
say who was the guilty party this time, and 
Mrs. Eastey was named. "After midnight 
she was aroused from sleep by the unfeeling 
marshal, torn from her husband and children, 
carried back to prison, loaded with chains 
and finally consigned to a dreadful and most 
cruel death. She was an excellent and 
pious matron. Her husband twenty years 



122 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

after justly expressed what all must feel that 
it was a 'hellish molestation.'" 

While in jail she asked that the judges would 
act as counsel for the accused and direct them 
in their defense. Needless to say that this 
petition was unnoticed. Mary Eastey was 
convicted and hanged September 22d of 
that fateful year. While in prison she wrote 
a letter or petition to her judges, begging 
them, not for mercy for herself, but for jus- 
tice for others who were accused as she had 
been. She says, "I petition your Honors not 
for my own life, for I know I must die and 
my appointed time is set ; but the Lord he 
knows it is that if it be. possible no more in- 
nocent blood may be shed, which undoubtedly 
cannot be avoided in the way and course you 
go in. I question not but your Honors do 
to the utmost of your powers in the dis- 
covery and detecting of witchcraft and witches 
and would not be guilty of innocent blood for 
the world. But, by my own innocency, I 
know you are in the wrong way. The Lord 



VERY NAUGHTY GIRLS 123 

in his infinite mercy direct you in this great 
work, if it be his blessed will that no more 
innocent blood be shed. I beg your Honors 
not to deny this my humble petition from a 
poor, dying, innocent person." 

Doubtless this noble, pathetic letter had its 
influence in stemming the tide of cruelty that 
seemed so strong at the time. Not many 
months later the judges and ministers began 
to recover themselves and use their common 
sense. Those who were still in prison were 
released, and this most sorrowful chapter in 
colonial history was closed. 

Little Ann Putnam who testified in nine- 
teen of these cases, and was chief in accusing 
Mary Eastey, lived to repent of her sin most 
-^bitterly. Her father and uncle were accusers 
of many, and the child must have been in- 
fluenced largely by them, and by .the notoriety 
and a sort of regard which she won in the com- 
munity. In 1706 her pastor read her confes- 
sion to the church: "I desire to be hum- 
bled before God for that sad and humbling 



124 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

providence that befel my father's family in 
the year 1692; that I, being in my childhood 
should by such a providence of God be made 
an instrument for the accusing several per- 
sons of a grievous crime, whereby their lives 
were taken from them, whom now I have 
just grounds and good reason to believe they 
were innocent persons ; though what was said 
or done by me against any person I can truly 
and uprightly say before God and man, I 
did it not out of any anger, malice or illwill, 
but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded 
by Satan. And particularly as I was a chief 
instrument of accusing of goodwife Nurse 
and her sister (Mary Eastey), I desire to lie 
in the dust and be humbled for it, in that I 
was a cause, with others of so sad a calamity 
to them and their families, for which cause 
I desire to lie in the dust and humbly beg 
forgiveness of God." 

Such is the sorrowful story of the wrong- 
doing of these Puritan children. We can 
only excuse them by remembering that all of 



VERY NAUGHTY GIRLS 125 

their elders believed in witchcraft and feared 
the so-called witches, and that because they 
were children they fell so easily under the 
influence of those ignorant, half savage serv- 
ants in the minister's kitchen. 

We are thankful that in later years they 
saw the harm they had done and repented 
bitterly their childish naughtiness and asked 
forgiveness of God and men. 



CHAPTER XIV 
About Their Manners 

With all the careful oversight and de- 
termined discipline of these colonial chil- 
dren, it is no wonder that their manners 
were better than those of the children of the 
twentieth century ; that is, their surface 
manners. That sort of free and easy con- 
versation between parents and children by 
which the actions of the latter are now sup- 
posed to be governed, would have been a 
dreadful impossibility to our ancestors. 

What should we think of a mother who re- 
quired that her children kneel when they speak 
to her ? Such a case is recorded by Elizabeth 
Lady Falkland who was never allowed to 
speak to her mother in any other position, 
" Sometimes for more than an hour together, 

126 



ABOUT THEIR MANNERS 127 

though she was but an ill kneeler and worse 
riser." Such an extreme of reverence was not 
common practice, yet the form of reverent 
courtesy to parents was everywhere present. 
"Honor thy father and thy mother that thy 
days may be long in the land thy God giveth 
thee" was the children's commandment. It 
is surely so still although our outward observ- 
ance of that honor is very different. 

Older folks were perhaps more carefully 
courteous in those days. The court records 
show that breaches of good manners such as 
calling names, making faces, and finger point- 
ing, as well as lying and scandal, were pun- 
ished by fine and imprisonment. Children 
must have been impressed with the danger 
as well as foolishness of such rude actions. 
Manners were more formal than with us both 
in home and street. We may think as we 
like about this kind of formality making life 
more agreeable ; I am sure it made many 
people more endurable and easier to live with. 

There were many books of manners printed 



128 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

in England as early as 1600, and some of 
these undoubtedly were the manuals of 
colonial children. Here is a quotation from 
one of them concerning behavior at table : 

Never sit down at the table till asked, and after 
the blessing. Ask for nothing; tarry till it be offered 
thee. Speak not. Bite not thy bread but break it. 
Hold not thy knife upright but sloping, and lay it down 
at the right hand of plate with blade on plate. Sing 
not, hum not, wriggle not. 

In many houses children never sat at table 
even after the blessing, but stood through the 
meal ; in others there was more formality 
— children even drank healths in a little 
wine. 

Behavior in school and on the street has 
its carefully made rules, many of which 
twentieth century boys and girls would be 
the better for observing : 

When any speak to thee, stand up. Say not I have 
heard it before. Never endeavor to help him out if 
he tell it not right. Snigger not; never question the 
Truth of it. 



ABOUT THEIR MANNERS 129 

How much more delightful conversation would 
be if grown folks as well as children minded 
this rule for good listeners ! In school the 
pupil is taught "to take off his hat at enter- 
ing" ; "to rise up and bow at the entrance of 
any stranger"; to "bawl not in speaking," 
and always to "give the Wall to Superiors." 
Rules for the student's passage on the street 
are equally minute : 

Run not Hastily in the Street, nor go too slowly. 
AYag not to and fro, nor use any Antick Postures either 
of Head, Hands, Feet or body. Throw not aught on 
the Street as Dirt or Stones. If though meetest the 
scholars of any other School, jeer not nor affront them, 
but show them love and respect, and quietly let them 
pass along. 

"Love and respect" — that is rather a hard 
rule to observe is it not ? One might re- 
frain from throwing stones at them or even 
from "jeering," but to love and respect the 
school that has beaten you every time in 
scholarship and very often at baseball must 
have been a very hard thing to do. 

This book of precepts in manners dates 

K 



130 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

from 1701, though it was reprinted in Worces- 
ter as late as 1787. 

It must have been something of a study to 
those children to learn who were their "Su- 
periors," to whom they were always to "give 
the Wall." Parents and teachers and min- 
isters of course, but beyond these there was 
a classification according to position, property, 
and family, of which our children know noth- 
ing. Boys in college had their names placed 
in catalogues, not by scholarship, classes, or 
in alphabetical order even, but by the dignity 
and wealth of their family. 

A college boy at Harvard had to give the 
best side of the staircase or hall to any one 
who was his social superior. People were 
seated in the meetinghouse with careful re- 
gard to differences of rank. How unameri- 
can, undemocratic you will exclaim. 

It must be remembered that these aristo- 
cratic communities were not yet American, 
but English colonials. Moreover, let us not 
be too sure that distinctions in wealth and 



ABOUT THEIR MANNERS 131 

position are not recognized nowadays. There 
is to be sure no code of rules laid down for the 
proper treatment of ''superiors" and that is a 
distinct advance on old times. Our public 
schools, too, are giving splendid training in 
democracy, and are making real Americans 
out of aliens who come from countries where 
the aristocratic system is as strong as that of 
England and her colony in olden days. 

The regard for good manners was as strong 
in the households of poor people as in those of 
wealth and pretension. The life of the Brain- 
erds, missionaries to the Indians, has been 
written by a relative who writes thus of their 
bringing up : 

A boy was early taught a profound respect for his 
parents, teachers and guardians and implicit obedience. 
If he undertook to rebel his will was broken by per- 
sistent and adequate punishment. He was taught that 
it was a sin to find fault with his meals, his clothes, 
his tasks, or his lot in life. Courtesy was enjoined as 
a duty. He must be silent among his superiors. If 
addressed by older persons he must respond with a 
bow. He was to bow as he entered and left the school, 



132 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

and to every man and woman, old or young, rich or 
poor, black or white whom he met on the road. Special 
punishment was visited on him if he failed to show 
respect for the aged, the poor, the colored, or to any 
persons whatever whom God had visited with in- 
firmities. 

There is an account of a blind piano tuner in 

Salem which well illustrates the last clause 

of the foregoing and shows that kindness 

and sympathy were really practiced as well 

as preached. This blind man was employed 

in many houses, though he had to be helped 

in his work by some member of the family. 

He was shown every attention due to an 

honored guest, served with cake and wine, 

and led home at the close of his hour. There 

appeared to be no "charity" in the modern 

meaning of the word in this treatment of a 

man suffering from one of the worst possible 

"infirmities," but a recognition that God 

had visited him and that people owed him 

help and care. 

Contrasting with the sensible precepts 

taught to the Brainerds, were the rules laid 




He Was Led Home at the Close of His Hour 
133 



134 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

down in a book of etiquette called the Mirror 
of Compliments, printed in England as early 
as 1635, but fortunately not reprinted in 
America till 1795. Here are the phrases 
supposed to be exchanged between the person 
giving a dinner and the receiver of the invi- 
tation : 

Sir, you shall oblige me very much if you will do me 
the honor to take my poor dinner with me, 

and the answer is equally formal, 

Sir, you are too courteous and persuasive to be re- 
fused and therefore I shall trouble you. 

A further polite speech is suggested for the 

entertainer at the close of the dinner : 

Sir, pray excuse your bad entertainment at the 
present dinner and another time we will endeavor to 
make you amends. 

The guest then makes the only sensible re- 
mark of the conversation, 

Truly, Sir, it has been very good, without any de- 
fect, and needs no excuse. 

Could anything be more unlike the simple 
sincerity and plain speaking we are accus- 



ABOUT THEIR MANNERS 135 

tomed to think Puritan ? We may be sure 
that such precepts were utterly disregarded, 
in favor of the plain, Scriptural language of 
their ordinary usage. 

An English writer repeats a truth with 
which we are familiar, though here expressed 
in rather an unfeeling way : 

It is the intention of the Almighty that there should 
exist for a certain time between childhood and man- 
hood, the natural production known as a boy. 

A noted American author is quoted to much 
the same effect, as saying that a boy from 
twelve to twenty years should be headed up 
in a barrel and so left to grow. Both ut- 
terances show a humorous understanding of 
the subject. Boys are by nature active and 
mischievous creatures, and the boys of the 
colonies were not different from those of 
to-day. The office of tithing master, we may 
be sure, was no enviable one. There are 
records of disorder and turbulence which 
show us plainly the small effect of all these 
rules for behavior on a part of the population. 



136 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

One more quotation illustrates this. It was 
written by an apologist for New England. 

All the mischief done is the breaking of a few panes 
of glass by idle Boys, who if discovered had been chas- 
tised by their own Parents. They have built their 
Chapel in a Public burying place, next a great Free 
School, where the Boys may, some by Accident and 
some in Frolick, and some perhaps in Revenge for dis- 
turbing their Relatives graves by the Foundation of 
the Building, have broken a few panes of the Windows. 
Undoubtedly, however, the careful training 
in courtesy and good manners which all 
these books of etiquette hint at, was useful 
in the new land. While they contained much 
that was artificial and not likely to be applied 
in everyday existence, there was also in them 
much that was sensible and useful. Life was 
made easier and more agreeable by the 
study of the little books. Some of us will 
testify that the most perfect ladies and 
gentlemen we have known are those trained 
in the "old school" by parents who had not 
lost the traditions of these colonial days. 



CHAPTER XV 

Children's Tasks 

The elders in colonial families, even magis- 
trates and ministers, took care that much 
time should not be given to play. " Satan 
finds some mischief still for idle hands to do" 
was a proverb in constant use. The modern 
gospel of play as a means of education, physi- 
cal and mental, had not even been dreamed 
of, and the amount of real work accomplished 
by children would be thought wonderful in 
any vocational school of to-day. On the 
farm there were plenty of useful things for 
children to do — sowing seed, weeding, and 
"choring." The housework furnished oc- 
cupation for all the girls, little and big, of a 
household, and from many of the letters and 
diaries of the day we learn how diligent and 

137 



138 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

faithful these little women were in their ap- 
pointed tasks. Spinning and weaving were 
simple industries familiar to most children. 




A Girl in the Garden Spinning 

The hand distaff, or "rock," was used for 
twisting the threads of cotton or wool. Good 
spinners could spin as they walked. On small 
looms girls wove tape and braids for use as 
ties for gloves, garters, belts, and other dress 
accessories. Even the boys wove garters 



CHILDREN'S TASKS 139 

and suspenders. With a fear that parents 
might not enforce the law of work with suf- 
ficient strictness, the magistrates ordered 
that "children tending sheep or cattle in the 
field should be set to some other employ- 
ment withal, such as spinning upon the rock, 
knitting, weaving tape, etc." 

Much work on the flax was done by chil- 
dren, and much of the wool spinning and 
weaving in the households by little girls. 
They could spin on the "great wheel" when 
they had to stand on a footstool to reach up. 
They skeined the yarn and did many more 
difficult things in the process of weaving. 

A boy's busy life on a Connecticut farm is 
described in an earlier chapter on Children's 
Handwork. There were many simple, useful 
tasks both indoors and out, which fell to his 
lot to do. There was not much time or 
energy left for such diversions as ball-playing. 

The sawing and chopping of wood was a 
boy's industry — a very helpful one when 
we remember that coal for heating and cook- 



140 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

ing was unknown and that there must be in- 
cessant work to keep the wood boxes filled 
in kitchen and sitting-room. Some of the 
boy's work brought him in a little money. 
All such opportunities were seized, we may be 
sure, by the hardy Yankee boy. He re- 
ceived six cents apiece for birch splinter 
brooms, the making of which was his best 
paying job. Splitting shoe pegs and gather- 
ing nuts were occupations very scantily 
paid. Gathering wild cherries paid better. 
They brought one dollar a bushel and were 
used for making cherry bounce or cherry rum. 
Some occupations in which the boys were 
specially helpful must have been great fun as 
well. Maple sugar making was certainly one 
of these — a big spring picnic in which men 
and boys camped out for days, gathering and 
boiling the sap from the maple trees, which 
were as much a product of the farm as buck- 
wheat or vegetables. Patches of snow still 
on the ground and icicles snapping from the 
trees made the charm of a scene very differ- 



CHILDREN'S TASKS 141 

ent from the summer greenery. The great 
blazing fire of brush was perhaps in charge 
of the boys to keep up. Undoubtedly they 
told stories around it. Then the mysterious 
darkness of the woods about them, the vague 
expectation of wild animals, catamounts, 
wildcats, perhaps even Indians lurking in 
their depths — what fearful delight these 
brought in the long night watches. The 
sweet sap was boiled in great iron kettles 
and cooled in cakes. When poured over 
snow it made a very good candy. What 
more delicious dainty could have been added 
to the plain fare of the homestead ! Surely 
work was better than play in sugar-making 
time. 

Hunting and fishing, too, were more work 
than play for boys. The cattle had to be 
guarded from wild animals, wolves especially. 
These were caught in many kinds of traps 
rather than by shooting, and a bounty was 
given for every wolf head brought in. In 
old town records there are names of many 



142 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

boys with "wolf money set to their credit." 
Foxes and bears were animals more destruc- 
tive and dangerous than squirrels and hares. 
The History of Roxbury tells that in one 
week of September, 1725, twenty bears were 
killed within two miles of Boston. Wild 
turkeys and pigeons were caught in ingenious 
traps, and bounties were paid for rattle- 
snakes. It is amazing to see the bounty lists 
of some New England towns for snake rattles. 
Another odd but very necessary piece of 
business in which boys had an important 
part was called "beating the bounds." 
Boundaries and division lines were kept in 
memory by walking round them once a year 
and noting anew the lines and landmarks. 
As it was most desirable that these should 
be impressed on the memory of young people, 
the boys were required to go with their elders. 
Sometimes they were given some slight re- 
ward for so much "perambulating." Pepys, 
that general English gossip, writing in 1661, 
said that he had heard that at certain bound- 



CHILDREN'S TASKS 143 

aries the boys were smartly whipped to im- 
press the bounds upon their memories ! Let 
us hope no such inhuman custom disgraced 
our New England landholders. 

Great piles of stone were used for marking 
boundaries as well as special trees which had 
to be replaced, perhaps, at these annual 
ceremonies. Disputed boundaries were set- 
tled and announced. All these precautions 
were necessary in the colonies, where land 
surveys were imperfect, land grants irregu- 
lar, and boundaries of each man's land un- 
certain. 

At the seashore, fishing was the greatest 
industry in which the boys played an im- 
portant part. Early historians tell of what 
boys did on these occasions. John Smith 
says : 

Young boys, girls, savages or any others, bee they 
never such idlers, may turne, carry and returne fish 
without shame, or either great paine : he is very idle 
that is past twelve years of age and cannot doe so much ; 
and she is very old that cannot spin a thread to catch 
them. 



144 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

It was natural that the sea should attract 
the boys born on its shores. There was 
romance and mystery about the sailor — -he 
had seen the great world and braved the 
dangers of storm and shipwreck. Many a 
boy ran away from the safe, monotonous life 
of the shore to the untried work of the whaler 
or fishing boat. 

To turn from the record of such useful work 
accomplished by children, to their intellectual 
doings, is painful rather than pleasant read- 
ing. We have seen how ambitious parents 
were for the education of their boys, and 
how eager to begin their training in books so 
as to take as little time as possible from the 
serious business of earning a living. Some 
accounts of the precocity of children are al- 
most unbelievable except that they are fre- 
quently given in connection with the early 
death of a poor, hard-pressed little scholar. 
Here are some of the accomplishments of a 
little son of a famous Englishman. The boy 
died in 1658 : 



CHILDREN'S TASKS 145 

He had, before his fifth year, not only skill to read 
most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, con- 
jugate the verbs regular, and most of the irregular; 
could turn English into Latin and vice versa, could con- 
strue and prove what he read and knew the govern- 
ment and use of relatives and verbs ; He had begun to 
write legibly and had a passion for Greek. The num- 
ber of verses he could recite was prodigious ; he had 
a wonderful disposition to mathematics, be able to 
demonstrate some propositions of Euclid. 

Then the father ends his proud account with 
the sentence : 

He was all life, all prettiness, far from morose, sullen 

or childish in anything he said or did. 

Poor sad father ! and poor little overburdened boy. 

In 1 741 Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son, 
a boy of nine years : 

This is the last letter I shall write you as a little 
boy, for tomorrow you will attain your ninth year; 
so that for the future, I shall treat you as a youth. You 
must now commence a different course of life, a dif- 
ferent course of studies. No more levity. Childish 
toys and playthings must be thrown aside and 
your mind directed to serious objects. What was 

L 



146 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

not unbecoming to a child would be disgraceful to 
a youth. 

This boy, too, died early and was a complete 
failure in everything he undertook. If these 
were the ideas of English parents in the 
most favored class, how much more intense 
would be the feeling of the Puritan fathers 
that their children must be forced into man- 
hood's thoughts and cares as early as pos- 
sible. These two boys were perhaps excep- 
tional in heredity and opportunity, but there 
is plenty of evidence that too much was 
expected of the children and that the ut- 
most diligence was demanded of them to ac- 
complish even part of the work planned for 
them. 

Boys entered the Boston Latin School as 
young as six years and a half. They began 
to study Latin even much younger. One lad 
who had learned the alphabet at one lesson, 
and could read the Bible at four years old, 
begged his father to let him study Latin. 
When his father declined, he studied the 



CHILDREN'S TASKS 147 

Latin grammar through by himself, and 
would have prepared himself for college at 
eight years old had he been permitted to 
have his way. To be sure, such preparation 
would be very different from that of to-day. 
There was no science and little mathematics, 
but a boy must know a certain amount of 
Latin and Greek. Paul Dudley entered Har- 
vard at eleven years, and his father's letter of 
introduction to the president shows how well 
he thought of him and his expectations for 
him: "I have humbly to offer you a little, 
sober and well disposed son, who tho' very 
young, if he may have the favor of admit- 
tance, I hope his learning may be tollerable ; 
and for him I will promise that by your care 
and my care, his own Industry and the bless- 
ing of God, this mother, the University, 
shall not be ashamed to allow him the place 
of a son." 

Parents expected a great deal from the 
children in those days. Their diligence and 
industry seem wonderful to us. To the 



148 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

habits formed by the children, we may think 
were due some of their great accomplishments 
as men and women, — the clearing of forests, 
the building of states, and the spread of the 
Puritan spirit of freedom through the whole 
country. 



CHAPTER XVI 
What Colonial Children Read 

Thinking of the bewildering number of 
books for boys and girls which twentieth cen- 
tury publishers are putting out, we may con- 
clude that reading plays a great part in the 
training of our children. Books that are 
profitable and those that are pleasurable pour 
in unending streams into homes and schools. 
Undoubtedly they do have their influence in 
the lives of most children as well as grown ups. 

Far different were the circumstances in 
colonial days. There were books then in 
no great profusion, but of a sort which no 
modern boy or girl would find readable. They 
had, to be sure, Pilgrim' } s Progress and JEsop* s 
Fables which are still printed for children's 
reading. Robinson Crusoe was published in 

149 



150 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

1 7 14 and Gulliver's Travels in 1726. Great 
books are these, and colonial children loved 
them better, because their interest was not 
lessened by comparison with the multitude 
of inferior books which divide attention 
nowadays. It is said that Fox's Book of 
Martyrs was found in many homes and was 
eagerly read by children. We may suppose 
that it supplied the lurid, dramatic element 
which some of the moving pictures give to-day. 
From all we know of the religious temper of 
New England, we should expect that re- 
ligious books for children were most highly 
thought of and the first supplied to them. 
This is the title of one of the most popular 
and widely read : 

A Token for Children, being an Exact Account of 
the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives and Joy- 
ful Deaths of Several Young Children, by James Jane- 
way. Preserved and Published for the Encouragement 
of Piety in other Children. 

The contents of this amazing book are simply 
unbelievable, and perhaps should not be 



WHAT COLONIAL CHILDREN READ 151 

dwelt upon here. The stories told by Cotton 
Mather, who wrote part of the book, make 
us marvel at his power of believing what he 
wanted to believe, and at his ignorance of 
human nature, especially child nature. He 
tells of a child two years old who was able 
"savingly to understand the mystery of 
Redemption"; another babe was "a dear 
lover of faithful ministers"; another little 
creature had "eyes red and sore from weep- 
ing on his sins." Another dreary little book 
was written by one Thomas White, and con- 
tained stories similar to the ones Cotton 
Mather told. A child of eight wept for his 
sins and was inconsolable (apparently). He 
had "whetted his knife on the Sabbath day" ; 
he had told his mother that he was cold (in 
answer to a question) and afterward was not 
quite sure that he had been cold. This he 
called "lying" and he bitterly repented such 
a sin. A modern boy would be inclined to 
doubt the reality of such excessive repentance. 
We may be absolutely sure that children 



152 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

read these books very little, however much 
they were urged to by parents who believed 
these accounts of precocious little saints. 

After a time some abridgments of the 
Bible were made for children. They must 
always have delighted in the beautiful Old 
Testament stories. Perhaps in many families, 
as in one I know of, Sunday afternoon was 
regularly given to the reading and telling of 
Moses, the little Hebrew baby in the basket 
of rushes, Daniel in the lion's den, and all the 
others, thrilling as the fairy stories and ad- 
venture stories that our boys and girls en- 
joy. I am afraid some attempts to shorten 
the Book were not equally adapted to child- 
ish comprehension and delight. Some were 
in rhyme, which most children like, and were 
printed in little books, three or four inches 
long, adapted to childish handling. A very 
curious book was called The Hieroglyphick 
Bible with Emblematick Figures This was 
illustrated with five hundred tiny pictures, 
set with the print, which were to help in the 



WHAT COLONIAL CHILDREN READ 153 

reading very much like an illustrated rebus. 
Altogether, we may conclude that the con- 
stant reading of the Bible was the real edu- 
cation of the young folks in religious things, 
rather than the exaggerated, morbid, sensa- 
tional "religious books for children'' which 
we have been considering. 

Beside these serious books, children had 
very few in the early colonial days. It was 
not until 1744 when John Newbery, an 
English publisher, settled in London, and 
began publishing some books especially for 
their reading, that boys and girls had any 
real story and picture books. These were 
speedily exported to America, and no doubt 
were read as eagerly there as in England, 
though there were many things in them 
which must have puzzled the little colonists, 
— the " local color" was so different from 
that which they knew. Dr. Holmes expresses 
this strangeness in his usual vivid way : 

There were books where James was always called 
Jem, not Jim ; where schoolboys got through a gap in 



154 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

the hedge to steal red-streaks instead of shinning over 
the fence to hook Baldwins ; where there were 
larks and nightingales instead of yellow-birds and 
bobolinks. 

The text of these books was largely written 
by Mr. Newbery himself, and had the curious 
feature of advertisement of his other books 
mingled with the story. For instance, where 
a child is to be presented with a book (in the 
story), he prefers one of "good Mr. Newbery's 
books." When Tommy Truelove (in the 
story) is to be given a reward for virtue or 
industry, he begs to have a little book, sold 
at the Book Shop in Bow Lane. Newbery 
knew how to appeal to the public of his time 
in other ways also. Here is one of his news- 
paper advertisements printed in 1755 : 

This day was published Nurse Truelove's New 
Year's Gift or the book of books for children, adorned 
with cuts, and designed as a present for every little 
boy who would become a great man, and ride upon a 
fine horse ; and to every little girl who would become 
a great woman and ride in a lord mayor's gilt coach. 
Printed for the author who has ordered these books to 



WHAT COLONIAL CHILDREN READ 155 

be given gratis to all boys and girls, they paying for the 
binding which is only two pence for each book. 

The binding of many books, nowadays, is the 
most valuable part, but is not so frankly ad- 
vertised. 

The little Boston girl, Anna Green Winslow, 
read some of these books, though she had 
also Pilgrim's Progress and Gulliver'' s Travels. 
She had for a New Year's gift " History of 
Joseph Andrews abbreviated" in "guilt and 
flowered covers." These covers were really 
very attractive and are never seen on modern 
books, as they were made in Holland, and 
the stamps from which they were manufac- 
tured have all been destroyed. Although 
the covers were so delightful to childish eyes, 
the books were very cheap, some of them only 
a penny apiece, others sixpence. Even at 
this price there was no enormous circulation 
of these American reprints of English books. 
Few of them have survived the handling of 
even one generation of children. The read- 
ing habit was discouraged probably, and it 



156 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

was not until the nineteenth century that the 
flood of books for young people began to 
rise. 

The book which has lived beyond all the 
children's books of this and earlier generations 
is Mother Goose's Melodies. This was in- 
cluded in Newbery's lists as early as 1760, 
and another edition was published in Massa- 
chusetts in 1785. Some people would like 
to believe that the rhymes are of American 
origin, and that their author was a Mrs. 
Vergoose, a Boston woman. All the internal 
evidence, however, is against this theory. It 
is probably a collection of rhymes of English 
nurses, which had perhaps been said or sung 
in castles and cottages for many years before 
being collected and put into book form. 
Any one who doubts that they are eternally 
adapted to childish fancy should try read- 
ing or teaching them to the two-year-old 
babies of our generation. 

Far different would be the reception of 
another of Newbery's books by the boys and 



WHAT COLONIAL CHILDREN READ 157 

girls of to-day. It is entitled The History of 
Tommy Careless or the Misfortunes of a Week. 
On Monday Tommy fell into the water, 
spoiled his clothes, and was sent to bed. 
Tuesday he lost his kite and was sent to bed. 
Wednesday he fell from an apple tree and 
was sent to bed. Thursday he scalded his 
fingers and was sent to bed. Friday he 
killed the canary bird and was sent to bed. 
Saturday he was the means by which Dobbin 
the horse kicked the house dog to death, 
and afterward he caught his mischievous 
fingers in a trap, so he was sent to bed. Of 
course these misfortunes were all caused by 
Tommy's own carelessness, and if he did not 
reform after such a series of results, he must 
indeed have been an abandoned character ! 
Fancy the comments of one of our Tommys 
on this moving history ! 

In all the books for children in colonial 
days there was a moral content, as is the 
case in our own day. In all the earlier books 
the appeal is to the fear of consequences. 



158 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

Wrongdoing is to be punished in every case. 
Tommy Careless was sent to bed, which does 
not seem very severe to be sure. In other 
books much more tragical consequences fol- 
low. In a story-poem, for instance, a willful 
daughter was locked up by her father for 
extravagance. She made a league with the 
Devil, tried to poison her parents, but dropped 
dead when her wickedness was discovered. 
In another story called The Afflicted Parents or 
an Undutiful Child Punished, a brother 
knocks his sister down and kills her. He is 
captured, tried, condemned, and executed. 
In both stories, however, the moral is ruined 
by the absurd ending. Both the culprits, 
the young man and the wicked brother, come 
to life again, repent of their wickedness, and 
live happy ever after. 

In stories of a later date, rewards for good 
children enforce the moral of the story. In 
the History of Little Goody Two Shoes pub- 
lished in 1787, the title page sets forth that the 
book is for the benefit of those 



WHAT COLONIAL CHILDREN READ 159 

Who from a state of Rags and Care 
And having shoes but half a pair, 
Their fortune and their fame would fix, 
And gallop in a coach and six. 

The history tells in detail how the little Goody 
finally acquired learning and an estate by 
good thoughts and deeds. 

A short story from a book called The Father's 
Gift or How to be Wise and Happy, even more 
strikingly illustrates this disposition to make 
the rewards of good conduct rather than the pun- 
ishment of bad deeds the motive to right living. 

There were two little Boys and Girls, the Children 
of a fine Lady and Gentleman who loved them dearly. 
They were all so good and loved one another so well 
that every Body who saw them talked of them with 
Admiration far and near. They would part with any 
Thing to each other, loved the Poor, spoke kindly to 
Servants, did every Thing they were bid to do, were not 
proud, knew no Strife but who should learn their books 
best and be the prettiest Scholar. The Servants loved 
them, and would do any Thing they desired. They 
were not proud of fine Clothes, their Heads never ran 
on their Playthings when they should mind their 
Books. They said Grace before they ate, and Prayer 



160 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

before going to bed and as soon as they rose. They 
were always clean and neat, would not tell a Fib for 
the World, and were above doing any Thing that re- 
quired one. God blessed them more and more, and 
their Papa, Mama, Uncles, Aunts and Cousins for their 
Sakes. They were a happy Family, no one idle ; all 
prettily employed, the little Masters at their Books, 
the little Misses at their Needles. At their Play hours 
they were never noisy, mischievous or quarrelsome. 
No such word was ever heard from their Mouths as 
"Why mayn't I have this or that as well as Betty or 
Bobby." Or "Why should Sally have this or that 
any more than I ; " but it was always " as Mama pleases, 
she knows best," with a Bow and a Smile, without 
Surliness to be seen on their Brow. They grew up, the 
Masters became fine Scholars and fine Gentlemen and 
were honoured ; the Misses fine Ladies and fine House- 
wives. This Gentleman sought to Marry one of the 
Misses, and that Gentleman the Other. Happy was 
he that could be admitted into their Company. They 
had nothing to do but to pick and choose the best 
Matches in the Country, while the greatest Ladies for 
Birth and most remarkable for Virtue thought them- 
selves honoured by the Addresses of the two Brothers. 
They all married and made good Papas and Mamas, 
and so the blessing goes round. 

One little chapter from Goody Two Shoes 

closes this account of the books colonial 



WHAT COLONIAL CHILDREN READ 161 

children read. This chapter was sometimes 
omitted in the printing as it was thought by 
some that the word ghost should never be 
mentioned to children. 

How the Parish was Frightened 

Who does not know Lady Ducklington, or who does 
not know that she was buried at this parish church ? 

Well, I never saw so grand a funeral in all my life ; 
but the money they squandered away would have 
been better laid out in little books for children, or in 
meat, drink, and clothes for the poor. This is a fine 
hearse indeed, and the nodding plumes on the horses 
look very grand ; but what end does that answer, 
otherwise than to display the pride of the living, or 
the vanity of the dead. Fie upon such folly, say I, 
and heaven grant that those who want more sense may 
have it. 

But all the country round came to see the burying, 
and it was late before the corpse was interred. After 
which, in the night, or rather about four o'clock in the 
morning, the bells were heard to jingle in the steeple, 
which frightened the people prodigiously, who all 
thought it was Lady Ducklington's ghost dancing among 
the bell ropes. The people flocked to Will Dobbins, the 
Clerk, and wanted him to go and see what it was ; but 
William said he was sure it was a ghost, and that he 

M 



1 62 WORK AND PLAY IN COLONIAL DAYS 

would not offer to open the door. At length Mr. 
Long, the Rector, hearing such an uproar in the village, 
went to the clerk to know why he did not go into the 
church and see who was there. 'I go,' says William, 'why 
the ghost would frighten me out of my wits ! ' Mrs. 
Dobbins, too, cried, and laying hold on her husband 
said he should not be eat up by the ghost. 'A ghost, 
you blockheads,' says Mr. Long in a pet, 'did either of 
you ever see a ghost, or know anybody that did?' 
' Yes,' says the clerk, ' my father did once in the shape of 
a windmill, and it walked all round the church in a 
white sheet, with jack boots on, and had a gun by its 
side instead of a sword.' ' A fine picture of a ghost truly,' 
says Mr. Long, 'give me the key of the church, you 
monkey ; for I tell you there is no such thing now, 
whatever may have been formerly.' Then taking the 
key he went to the church, all the people following 
him. As soon as he opened the door what sort of a 
ghost do you think appeared ? Why little Twoshoes, 
who being weary, had fallen asleep in one of the pews 
during the funeral service and was shut in all night. 
She immediately asked Mr. Long's pardon for the 
trouble she had given him, told him she had been locked 
into the church, and said she should not have rung the 
bells, but that she was very cold, and hearing Farmer 
Boult's man go whistling by with his horses, she was in 
hopes he would have went to the Clerk for the key to 
let her out. 



WHAT COLONIAL CHILDREN READ 163 

And so we come to the close of this slight 
record of the work and play of our small 
ancestors. There are scant materials for 
any fuller account of their doings in the hun- 
dred and fifty odd years before 1776, yet we 
cannot doubt that much in their training 
helped to make the Revolution the success 
that it was. They grew up with the tradi- 
tions of freedom and self direction which were 
their heritage from the Pilgrims, and when 
the time came for the trial of their faith in 
the seven-year struggle with England, the 
men who had been colonial children were 
ready. 



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